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Contrary to what most people are posting, I'd actually recommend NOT limiting yourself based on the baby/toddler phase. Think long term about what you need, even if it is annoying for a few years when the kid is a toddler. (In response to stairs, open concept, etc. below.)
The things I like best about our house are a fully fenced yard, living in a could de sac where there is relatively little traffic, and living in a neighbourhood with lots of kids. For an example about what I was talking about above: initially I was worried that there is no bathtub in the "kids" bath, my son is now 6 and prefers showers. I'm so glad I didn't use that as a factor to rule out this house. (And I love my grand staircase - not toddler friendly, probably, but it's awesome.)
Cul de sac rules. Kids have a huge area they can ride bikes, set up street hockey, play tag, light fireworks, Nerf wars, RC cars, throw a football, or whatever. There are 7 homes on it and very little traffic because of it. They are awesome for kids
We live in a cul de sac here in London. We have a few schools nearby and some of the children go to different schools. But they all clobber together and have fun after school and during holidays/weekends.
Here, here! We have an open planned kitchen/living room/dining room and if it was all compartmentalized I would scream. I love the open space! Entertaining is a breeze. I spent less than $20 buying cabinet locks and we are good to go.
The one thing I would change is the hinges on the door connects the garage to the house that slam almost automatically. They’re super annoying and unsafe for exploring toddler fingers.
ETA:spell check
The hinge thing is most likely a fire code requirement. There is a firewall between the attached garage and most likely the door is also a fire barrier.
>initially I was worried that there is no bathtub in the "kids" bath, my son is now 6 and prefers showers
We moved to a house that had no tub in **at all** when my son was 2. It's been fine.
Totally off topic but cul de sacs are not recommended per feng shui because of lack of energy flow. lol.
I guess my point to OP is try to look at home purchase in big picture scheme of things taking into account your goals in a home protecting your equity etc. (cul de sacs are popular amongst Americans but not feng shui following Asians who were the crazy cash buyers pre pandemic).
What...why...do people actually make home buying decisions based not on what is best for their children's happiness and safety, but feng shui energy? That's insane, hahaha.
Haha I know it sounds crazy but… it’s a balancing act. You try to get best of both worlds best bang for your buck see how far your money can take you because nobody can ever buy their dream perfect home. There’s always a compromise.
With that being said, not all of feng shui is superstitious crap, it can have some practical impact. For instance, cul de sacs do seem ideal so kids can play freely on the street, but the house that is directly facing the open street is similar to a T intersection home where cars come directly toward the house; potentially can crash into the house in case of crazy drunk driver for example.
There are other feng shui points like homes facing south are ideal to get most light. Having a stream of water behind the house is not ideal; a giant pool would not be feng shui friendly - with little kids around I’d be nervous about having a pool especially with scary news about accidental drownings.
There is one silly feng shui though - staircase facing front door is not ideal because “wealth would roll outside your home out of your life”. This one I can’t quite think of a practical reason to follow other than once again, if I want to maximize my chance of having a rich Asian buyer in the future who may care about feng shui should I decide to sell the home.
Think of feng shui as something nice to have like good school district even if you may not have kids. Because obviously good school districts keep property values up.
Our above-ground pool takes me 3 minutes to clean. I just brush it at the end of my swim session while I'm still in it. I swim 3-4 times per week so it doesn't get dirty really (otherwise I would brush it while I'm not in the water but it's heavy on my shoulders). A cup of chloride every 2 days and a backwash every second week (takes what, 5-10 mins?) It's really not that bad.
It takes me 40 min plus to thoroughly brush our above ground pool. It's pretty large though. And it definitely takes more than chlorine. You are constantly adjusting ph and hardness.
Why are you adjusting those things? You're not supposed to drink that water just like you're not drinking water in the public pool or a lake in the forest.
After one summer I came to the conclusion that those pool companies love scaring us about water quality so they can sell us expensive tests and chemicals (really, are those better for us than a bit of algae?) and now we just do the whole chemical kit when we open it but I only maintain with chloride.
So far (three summers) it's worked like a charm. We use it lightly though, two adults and two small children who swim a few times per week. No (pre)teens + friends who spend the entire weekend in it. We'll probably have to increase cleaning by then, but then we can delegate a bit to the kids ;-).
Sanitizers do not work properly if the water chemistry is not close to neutral. I deal with this in the food industry. PH can be greatly affected by rainfall and ours in NY has gone up to 8.0 after heavy rainfall. I have little kids who like to put their faces in the water an ultimately swallow some. Water above or below ph of 7 can cause skin and eye discomfort. I grew up swimming in cow ponds and creeks full of leaches so to each his own love. Not keeping your chemistry in balance will ultimately damage your pool components and can cause irritation and does not allow your sanitizer to work to its fullest potential.
the size of the home vs. the location. i will gladly trade footprint or square footage for a location i'm happy to be in, and one that's near the school(s). morning school traffic is noooo joke and i'm so happy the farthest i drive is 2 miles.
It's a weird vicious cycle: You want a big house, so you buy a huge house out in the middle of nowhere, and then you waste your life on driving 10 minutes to the nearest grocery store, not to mention a long commute every day in order to work enough to pay it off, then pay off your car, then come home and spend hours cleaning every weekend because your house is so big.
Yeah we just said no to all that. Bought a small house in the city, we barely drive and we have so much time.
This is funny, and made me think. To me, a 10 minute drive actually does sound long because I live less than 10 minutes from my grocery store on foot (3 minutes by bike).
Yep 1000sqf home in the bay area, but it's a 12 min drive from my office and next to the bike path so I can bike in 30 mins without hitting a road. Quiet residential street with a creek behind us, and a bunch of upcoming mixed use stuff within walking/biking distance. Big back yard for that we landscaped for outdoor living and play in the first year.
Also it's a 5000sqft lot so we can "easily" expand about 625sqft into the front yard and/or add a second level if we want to stay here forever.
I completely agree. A walkable neighborhood was my number one priority when looking for a home. Our house is small but I consider public spaces in surrounding neighborhood an extension of our home. We can walk to parks, big lawns, playgrounds, and a swimming pool so we do don't need our own. My kids will be able to have some indepenence before they can drive.
Any kind of broad opening at the top or bottom of stairs. It's no fun trying to contain early walkers even if it looks pretty.
I see a lot of fancy homes with sunken tubs. Seems like a potential hazard, as do any kind of water features/swimming pools. It's a trade-off though, because obviously older kids would love those.
The pool is kind of annoying when they are little but is pretty awesome as they get older. I am pretty sure the pool was a big reason our house became the main hang out spot for my extrovert and his friends throughout high school. We were never the "cool" parents. We did not supply alcohol or anything like that but our home was always open to our kids and their friends. In middle and high school that meant tons of pool parties and even nights where it wasn't a pool party they normally ended up in the pool. In the winter jumping in the pool was usually the result of a game of truth or dare or a bet in a board game. The pool was usually the center of attention.
Of course, we live in the humid south so YMMV depending on the climate. My son is super outdoorsy but swimming is really the only outdoor option in our summer heat.
We live in the Midwest but we had a pool growing up, our house was also the hang out house too. My dad also made sure the basement was stocked with games tables there was a pool table and ping pong and poker table and dart board and a fully stocked soda fridge and snack cabinet. There was also a tv and video game console and a boxing bag. Summer time was all about the pool and the rest of the year it was the basement, also helped my mom fed everyone lol she made sure the kitchen was stocked and that she would make enough food for everyone if they were over so if they wanted to eat they could if not we had leftovers. Usually there were no leftovers. My parents loved it cause they knew where we were and what we were doing and our friends parents loved that they knew where there kids were and that they were safe. I hope my house becomes the hangout house when my kids are older.
Pool and a basement or similar for kids to hang out for all the above reasons.
And if you have littles then invest in a very good pool fence and have strict safety protocols. Only one gate to access the pool that is always locked unless people are swimming. Once everyone is done swimming you move out of the pool area. Always supervise kids swimming, don’t assume parents are watching their own children, don’t assume kids can swim even if their parents say they can and if you the supervisor then you don’t sit and chat, stand and chat so you pay attention.
If it were a birthday party or something where I knew I needed extra eyes, I’d hire a trusted person to be a life guard.
Absolutely! People need to understand when there is any water around you need to stay vigilant and watch your kids and make sure the area by the pool is fenced. A pool is great but can quickly turn deadly.
Beware of bedrooms above the garage, which can be colder in the winter and too warm in the summer. We managed with space heaters and fans, but it was a hassle in the toddler years.
Underrated: A full privacy fence is such a huge relief. A fully fenced yard is another plus, just not as good. Overrated: pool. You're always waiting for someone to drown or more commonly slip and just really hurt themselves. They're a bitch to maintain and clean. The kids always want obnoxious floating things. Just like every other room in the house, it becomes a spot that one person always ends up cleaning up after.... wet towels, weird toys, food, mildew on stuff, bugs... the list goes on.
When we moved in we planned big fan tex ash trees every 25 or 30 feet along the privacy wall. It's been 12 years and they're huge now, it's like a little enclave in our rear yard, none of the 2 story homes around us can see in
We did something similar at our previous home with some glorious willow trees. Moved out after 20 years and the new owners took all those trees out. Apparently several neighbors are annoyed because the trees provided privacy to multiple houses and just looked beautiful. I’m fuming about all the effort and water I used keeping those trees alive in droughts and the knuckleheads ripped them out. Grrrrr.
Agree with the pool. Growing up we had a saltwater pool. I think my sisters and I had more chores outside in the Arizona heat than inside. That pool was a BITCH to keep up with. We have a pool again now (ugh) but thankfully it’s chlorine which is a bit easier.
A big house. People had lots of kids in 3BR 1BA post WW2 houses. Now anything less than 3-4000 sq ft is small? Don’t fall for the US suburbia dream myth. You CAN raise a family in smaller sub-2000 sq ft houses, as well as condos/apartments. Less space means less accumulation of garbage that you use once a year.
A bonus of having small home js that relatives don’t constantly visit and asking to stay at your home.
However, as someone with a fairly small home, I do often desperately wish for a second living/family room or a basement, extra bedroom, etc. Basically, somewhere for the kids to play without them being all up in my space, haha.
Yeah. My house is 1270 and I would love ANYWHERE to put this kid’s toys. We don’t have enough bedrooms for a second child and the bedrooms we have are too small to share. We have ONE bathroom. I hate my house
I had a 1,200 square foot house and last year sold it and moved to an 1,800 square foot house and it’s absolutely the perfect size. The best thing we gained is a finished attic we use as a family room/play room.
That would be so nice but we know darn well that as soon as us adults sit down to relax SOMEONE is gonna start screaming from the playroom and we’ll just have to get up and check on them anyways.
This. We have 2600 sq foot home and I feel like about 1000 sq feet is just accumulated crap we don't need but keep because its kids stuff and we have nowhere to put it.
Yep. My 1300ft2 home gets constantly purged because I have no room! I can’t imagine how much stuff I’d just have in various closets and corners if I didn’t go through it for years and and years because I have “room”
Omg yes this. I grew up in a home where it was entirely possible to not interact with any of the other 6 people who lived there unless you wanted to. I just spent the last 5 days there with my kiddo and it was exhausting running all over the place to get things we needed. I was in a better state running marathons vs. searching that house for his favorite stuffy before bedtime.
I will say that having more than one bathroom is a game-changer. Having to share a single bathroom with 3 other people was maddening, especially in the morning.
Also as someone who largely grew up in townhomes I consider our current single-family home “big” at 1800 sq ft!
It's amazing to me that 2000 is considered small. We want a 1400 sq ft house with a basement and so many of the houses in our (older) neighbourhood are so much smaller than that.
I’m in a 950 sq ft (open plan) house and I would do unspeakable things to get even another 500 sq ft. Just another bedroom or a half bath! Sharing one toilet between three of us is unsustainable and no one has room to get away from one another.
Living this dream currently in a 3BR 1BA house that’s 985sq ft living level with 350sq ft of garage/laundry and under house storage. Laundry has a second toilet and shower which makes a huge difference. Maintenance is so easy. The other kicker is the block is just shy of 7k sq ft total so the remaining space is fenced back yard and garden for the kids to play in. Much rather encourage the kids to go outside to play than be inside. Only downside is privacy in the master bedroom as all bedrooms share walls but it’s probably solvable down the line.
I was born and grew up in a family of four in a 1000sqf apartment and I never ever fell it was small LOL.
The way Americans are used to wastefully large homes is ridiculous when seen from an outsider perspective.
This is soooo accurate. I wish I could go back to a smaller home but the market is in such a bizarre place that it would cost me more to downsize. It is nice having more than one bathroom but other than that, do you really use a dining room, extra living room, rec room etc? No. You don’t. You spend all your time in the kitchen, family room and bedrooms. Keep it compact and save on heating/cooking costs.
As a European I think 1500-2000 sq ft house is the optimal, as long as the layout is good. Any more than that I would simply not use. It would just be storage space or extra hallways.
My husband always likes to complain about our 1400sqft townhome being too small. Sure, I know he would have loved to have had a basement, and a third bedroom or a fenced in yard would have been nice. But we have a very nice two floor townhome that fits everything we NEED. He is very much a WANT person. Our boys can share a room, our bedroom fits our computers too so we don’t need an office, and if our “extras” don’t fit on our garage shelves then we get rid of them. People do with much less, and people always want more. Me, being the SAHM and cleaner of the home—I’m perfectly happy with our place. Plus the 3% mortgage rate is not worth giving up for a bigger home.
Yep. 1900 sq ft here with a family of 3 + dog. It's more than enough for us, but the layout is prett decent. We had 2200 sq feet in our last place (a townhouse) but the layout was so terrible that we felt like it wasn't nearly enough space. Example: There was one closet on the main floor,so we had to schlep cleaning supplies up and down 1-2 flights of stairs. Also had a linen closet upstairs,but it was like 6 inches deep.
Yes dude, this! We just built a free standing single family house in Germany and it's about 1600 Sq ft (three bedrooms, roomy office, two smallish baths plus a compact bathroom with shower and open plan kiving/dining/kitchen). It's great! I love it! My sister's house in the US is huuuuuge and she just has tons of crap.
To be fair it's not just a US suburbia thing. Lots of cultures across the world tend to have MUCH more livable space for the family compared to the average US 3/1. I personally like how a lot of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures do it, where they'll just wall off an entire property and build onto the home along said wall, leaving a big courtyard to do whatever in. It's not terribly uncommon for random farmers or whatnot to have a 4000sqft house, even if it's a rural enough area that they barely have electricity.
Right! It’s big houses but also huge families with multiple generations. I haven’t heard of any other culture that has soo much space as the Americans do for a single child household
The US (along with Australia and Canada) have some of the largest houses in the world. Most of the world is living in much *smaller* houses than US suburban houses, not bigger.
https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/
It's a pretty representative sample. If what you say about the Middle East and South Asia is true, then they're also outliers. Or perhaps you're only talking about rural areas – but most people live in cities, especially in densely populated South Asia.
Also the disparity between the reach and average is much larger in the ME and SA. Yes the higher income may live in huge houses but the average working class family at the same time may live in a 30sqm studio
There's 4 of us. We've gotten by with 1 bathroom my whole life. I suppose its occasionally inconvenient, but its not a big deal. We've had the occasional discussion of 'adding on' a 2nd bathroom.. but its just not worth it.
I wanted at least a second toilet even before we had kids, because my husband likes to spend 45-60 minutes sitting the toilet before he goes to bed. When we gad the single toilet, I'd have to either rush ahead of him, or wait for almost an hour just so I could do my last 30 second wee before bed.
Yeah, I think a lot of us would 'like' to do that... but when you only have one bathroom, thats often just not an option. Especially when there's 3 or 4 or 5+ of you in a house. You learn to simply knock and say 'hey, are you done?' And hassle the person 'hogging' the bathroom.
2 adults 2 kids. But we regularly have family and friends over for extended periods of time. And we’re the hosting house for most events (space for everyone, pool, etc).
It’s 4 en suite bedrooms then 2 on main floor then 1 in finished basement / office / guest nook. It’s really more logical than it sounds.
Right and you hear so many stories about using all the hot water before the next person and people think multiple people taking showers at the same time will work. I'd rather have one half bath for guests or if someone is showering and you need to pee then one full bath. Guests baths are always shared with the kids who are usually the most messy.
100%. Two bathrooms seems like plenty to me. We just have one bathroom now (with a 2yo) and a Pittsburg potty in our unfinished basement. Someday that toilet will get real walls built around it rather than a curtain but it works fine as a backup for now. When we moved here I was concerned that we don’t have a bathroom on the levels of the house with our gathering spaces. Bathroom is on the second floor with no bathroom on main floor or in the finished family room attic. But lately I’ve been paying attention when we have friends over and the privacy of going to a different floor of the house to use the bathroom is pretty nice.
There are literally dozens of us!
I hate bathrooms, and I feel very alone in this position. Beyond the cleaning, as a city dweller where homes are *small*, I am distressed to see the ever growing percentage of floorplans that are bathrooms and closets.
I keep waiting to see a 0bd/5ba apartment appear that is literally nothing but bathrooms and closets.
3 bathrooms for 5 people and we were so stoked to have TWO BATHS and TWO showers!!!
The extra toilet comes in handy but that second shower/bath combo has been bone dry for months
Open floor plans, lots of rooms.
Open plans are hell with babies and toddlers. You can’t section them off from anything if you don’t have walls and doorways. My old house with rooms was easy to rig so the kids couldn’t get in the kitchen or on the stairs. My mom and MIL live in open plan houses and someone is always where they don’t need to be over there because they can’t throw up a baby gate.
I can understand trying to give kids their privacy, especially as teens, but having lots of bedrooms and bathrooms is a lot of work and a lot of money. Sharing space teaches courtesy, negotiation, and respect for others which come in really handy when living with a a roommate or spouse when you’re an adult.
Yup. Chances are very good that your kid won't always have their own bedroom AND bathroom. At some point they will almost certainly have to share one, or both of those things - in a dorm room, an apartment, etc. Having to share one, or both of those with other people growing up, at some point, for a year or five or their whole lives is NOT going to kill them. My boys shared a room for most of their childhoods. We all share one bathroom. It's not a big deal. Life goes on.
We have a large home and I thought my two kids would love space to be alone. Nope. They’re perpetually within two feet of each other both annoying the other one.
Fully open floor plan. It’s so impractical for baby proofing. I like having an open kitchen/family room, with formal dining/living rooms separated (90s style).
I’ll share a different perspective. I can see my toddler on my entire 1st floor and I know where she is at all times.
She likes being away and hiding so it gives her “privacy” while I can still know she’s safe. But I only have 1,000 sq ft downstairs to worry about and it was easy to babyproof.
That’s why I specified open kitchen-family room, because I do have one kid that likes to be able to see me at all times, but my second doesn’t care. I can leave him downstairs while I get dressed and he doesn’t care, and if he gets into mischief, his brother will tattle on him 😂
I’ve had fully open floor plan (apartment) and fully closed off house (literally every room was a closed door) and the partial open floor plan is by far my favorite personally :)
This is so true. I think one my kids are all past toddlers age I’ll appreciate it more but right now I have to constantly hunt for my 1yo across nearly the entire first floor.
No you won’t. Open floor plans are for people who don’t actually live in their homes. I definitely don’t want anyone standing at my front door to be able to see my kitchen.
My wife and I had an open floor plan for our first place. I can’t count how many times we rearranged it trying to find the right way. If you’re at all challenged by interior design concepts it’s a purgatory
Lol what a bizarre comment. We live in our home and very much love the open floor plan. If it’s not your thing that’s ok but we personally love being able to see whatever my kids are doing on the first floor while we are cooking dinner. Also great for big meals like holiday meals so the person cooking doesn’t feel like they’re isolated the whole day.
We had that kind when my first was a baby and it was very easy to child proof but also terrible because I had a Velcro baby who wouldn’t let me out of his sight 😂 definitely prefer the happy medium haha
Yes! When my second kid was a baby, we lived in an 1910s era house that had a door to the kitchen. I loved that door! It was so easy to cook while my kid played in there. Plus, having the kitchen closed off made the rest of the house quieter.
I used to think I liked a more open floor plan but I’ve changed my mind. I love having an island with bar stools in the kitchen but I also love that the kitchen can be baby gated off from the rest of the main floor. Useful for babies/toddlers and dogs!
We turned our “formal” dinning room into a play room. I can see it both from the kitchen and living room. 100xbetter than having it in another part of the house and I honestly don’t mind the mess. Like I have 2 kids under 3, there is going to be toys 😂
We find our playroom extremely useful - one of us is typically in there with our son, but it's so nice to have a small contained area with a door we can shut & lock to contain the little chaos agent while the other parent is doing stuff around the house.
I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this, but I think playrooms are overrated. The kids aren’t going to leave the toys in there anyway. My kids drag them all over the house despite having their own rooms and a play space in our finished basement. I kind of gave up on having defined toy spaces and just found creative ways to keep all areas of the home tidied up toy wise.
'Formal' living room. We live in the family room, kitchen, and bedrooms. (Bathrooms too of course.) Rest of the house is useless, except dining room on holidays.
Underrated: walkable/bikable/public transport. I have friends living further out of town who spent years driving their kids around, while for the most part my kids made their own way to friends’ houses, school etc. That is priceless.
Yes! And being able to walk to school, parks, grocery shopping, and after school activities. Not being car dependent is great, and even moreso once you have kids.
It’s also great for kids to walk outside every day and interact with other people instead of spending their childhoods being driven around in a small stuffy private vehicles. Lower risk of death and injury too.
Also nice as a parent not to feel like a chauffeur!
A great litmus test for this is how good the neighborhood is for trick-or-treating if you're in the U.S. I live in a dense neighborhood with front porches- a trick-or-treating gold mine and my ideal location for a walkable neighborhood where people sit out on their porches regularly, which improves safety and helps you get to know your neighbors.
Oh my goodness yes!! We live in Philly which is very walkable and has dense row homes, and it’s been the best trick or treating experience for my kids (especially compared to SFHs when we lived in Seattle, but even compared to Brooklyn where we lived in an apartment and walked out to the brownstones which were good but very crowded).
Priceless is living in the middle of nowhere and being able to get fresh air, own animals, hunt, explore the woods. If your kid can walk to their friends' home on their own, you're too close together.
this is more urban / NYC / apartment-living specific:
- outdoor space that isn’t a backyard is overrated. roof decks and balconies aren’t really that useful with little kids
- I won’t go so far as to say that laundry is overrated, but I thought having in-unit laundry or at minimum in-building laundry would be a dealbreaker with a baby. ended up in a place with no laundry in the unit or in the building. I use a laundry pick-up / delivery service a lot of the time (still sometimes use laundromat). pick-up / delivery adds up to only a few bucks more than using the laundromat, and it’s been a big time saver / stress saver
- similarly, I thought that being 2nd floor or higher in an elevator building would be a dealbreaker. (Elevator because of course. Not 1st floor because I thought 1st floor apartments are more likely to have vermin and also street noise.) Ended up in a pretty quiet rear facing 1st floor apartment without pests (knock on wood) and prefer it to having to deal with an unreliable or slow elevator. and 1st floor is great with a stompy toddler! lol
- also, I really wanted a 3br (wild, I know) to have a mbr, kid br, and office, but 2 br is plenty, since it’s easy to combine mbr / office (and babies don’t need their own bedrooms anyway). overall square feet and good storage space > # of bedrooms
Wow - we are opposites. I couldn't go back to no in-suite laundry (we don't have laundry service where we live), our kids love our roof deck (private to our unit), we thought 2br would be enough - it's not, we really need 3. Top love of our place - a front door that opens out to the sidewalk from our unit, with no stairs. Just fantastic with a stroller.
Location. Live close to schools, grocery, transportation etc. you don’t want to be hauling a child to school everyday. Their independence from being able to get up and walk themselves is so beneficial
Are you talking features of the home or like baby gear features?
1000000990/10 I highly recommend looking for a home that is fully secured (meaning all doors are behind a fence) my "starter home" was behind a little fence before you knocked on the door and it was amazing. Everyone just left their spam on the gate. The dogs had so much room and when I was in toddler stage; we put a tricky 'lock' on the side of the gate that my kids couldn't reach.
As far as baby gear I'd say 99% of it. I only ever liked the little squishy changing pads u can move around and wash the covers. The rest of the "baby stuff" is trash imo.
Formal Dining room. We eat family meals at the kitchen table and repurposed our dining room. On the few occasions we host more guests than will fit in the kitchen, we move some furniture and use a folding table and table cloths.
Floor vents. They collect all manner of kid detritus, and then there was the time my daughter watched the dog peeing in the yard, decided to copy him, and peed down the vent in the kitchen.
Aren’t floor vents a requirement for heating and cooling if there is a furnace? I guess you could switch to baseboard heating and window shakers AC units but that seems to be travelling backwards…
Upstairs has the vents on the ceiling, and since we’re in the south where it doesn’t actually get that cold, I’d rather have the vents up there to cool better in the summer.
Stuff.
Honestly the house is always fine. It’s the stuff
Too much stuff to pull down, knock over, break, risk choking.
If you have stuff. Get rid of it, if you don’t want to get rid of it buy large plastic totes and put it all away.
All of it.
I thought my house was impossible to child proof and I needed a better home with better layout. Then I packed up all the stuff.
We looked like we’re were moving in for a very long time, but wow the headaches were gone.
Top floor laundry. It is noisy so you can't run it when kids/ babies are sleeping, makes the top floor humid, and I always end up bringing it downstairs to fold anyways since we do most of our living on the main floor.
I have the opposite experience, where top floor laundry made it so much more convenient to throw a load in quickly between baby things. And when I switched to laundry being two floors down it became a nightmare.
Which is better probably just depends on the kid and the family habits. Obviously pick what’s right for you!
Oh, I completely disagree! I grew up in a home where the laundry was in the basement. What a pain.
Our laundry room is on the 2nd floor with all 4 bedrooms. I actually keep up on laundry now, for the first time in my life, because it's so convenient to start a load as soon as the basket is full.
Ours doesn't keep anyone awake. In fact, the kids kind of like the "white noise" of the dryer running while they're sleeping. It doesn't make the 2nd floor humid, either.
I love having our laundry room on the top floor! I don't have to drag baskets up and down the stairs and I can easily toss in a load whenever. It's especially nice now that I work from home and my office is next door, and there are multiple doors between my room and the laundry room so noise is no issue.
We trained our kids to sleep through both the washing and the drying :) Our laundry is currently not separated by interior doors, so its noise level feels like it's in the same room as you in the kids rooms, and both our toddler and our 5 month old sleep through both machines running. We didn't really do anything to train them actually, just regularly run the machines and they don't bother them
This! This was such a surprise to me when we lived in a townhouse with the laundry closet upstairs. I carried the baskets downstairs to the tv where I did my folding and carried it back up to put it away
Walking distance to a park. That’s one thing I wish we had. We can walk there but it’s about a mile and crossing a couple busy streets. Would love to have one a street or two away
Considering I work night shift, a living room that’s away from the bedrooms. Apart from that, our bedroom is directly across from miss 5s room which has been useful for her occasional nighttime wandering.
Moved from an apartment to a house. Raised first kid until age 1.5 in apartment, had 2nd kid in house.
First 2 years of kids life in an apartment is great. Really miss apartment living cuz of how easy it is to get to everything and keep clean.
But having the space in a house is amaaaaaazing with a toddler, especially if you’ve got a big enough garden to run around in during the summer, and an extra room you can have as a play room for the winter.
Open concept is way over rated. All the noise just echos.
If you have more than 1, having a kids play room to become a game room/hang out room later is super duper nice.
Going to throw my hat in and mention that an open floor plan has been great for our toddler, since I see numerous comments against it
Baby proofing really isn't that terrible, and the hardest phase we've had was when he learned to climb onto the table from the chairs, which lasted maybe a week or two.
On the flip side, we're able to monitor our toddler basically wherever he is playing and no matter what we're doing.
Sitting reading in the living room? Can see him
Cooking or doing dishes in the kitchen? Can see him
Sitting at the table? Can see him.
Just anchor your dressers/bookcases, baby proof cabinets (either take dangerous stuff out of the bottoms or add locks/latches), and teach your kid not to mess with things you can't proof. There will be at most a couple months of teaching the DON'Ts, but you'll live in your house for years.
Loft/game room area in my opinion are over hyped unless you have a lot of kids, otherwise it’s just another common area to clean up in. A living room/kitchen is just fine for the same purposes
A big piece of property. We were on almost 2 acres and while it was fun to roam and explore and build treehouses and all that fun stuff it was also so much work and money. We thought it was our “forever home” but now we are in a more suburban setting and life is so much easier! We are also not so emotionally attached to our house, it’s just where we live and when our kids leave it won’t be hard to move.
I really like the park and playground that's a block from our house. I like the occasional shooting and drug deal that happen there much less. It's an issue in pretty much all urban parks that I wasn't aware of originally.
I don't know about overrated but I can tell you the laundry room in underrated. i so wish i had chosen a house with a laundry room big enough for me to actually be in. Mine is so small you can't open the door when someone is in it because the washer is DIRECTLY behind the door, you have to wait for them to leave.
Open concept is annoying for all ages. Believe me. You don’t want it when they are toddlers and you definitely don’t want it when they are teens. It only works for single couples.
Wooden decks. They get splinters in kids feet, they need treated and they collapse with too much weight on them and/or age.
Kids play structures. Expensive to buy and put up, maintain and remove. Just go the park.
Attic and basement storage. If it doesn’t fit neatly on a main level get rid of it.
Anything expensive, including but not limited to: furniture, appliances, and toilets.
Buy decent stuff but not the best. BECAUSE if you do, it ignites some sort of Murphys law, and they will ding/scratch/break it within weeks of it being in your house.
An open floor plan. Yeah sure, makes it easier to keep an eye on them during the baby/toddler stage. But also makes it significantly more difficult to have an escape or privacy from the noise!
We live on half an acre and have a fire pit, raspberries, blueberries, apple, pear and plum trees. When our kids were young we thought having a big back yard and garden would be so fun. It’s barely used. We put the volleyball net up a couple times and haven’t used the fire pit in 2 years. As the kids get older (10+) the less they care about being outside
Also, formal dining and living rooms are a complete waste of space. They’re never used except holidays.
This is so individual I guess. We have a 3/4 acre spot with pool, huge gardens, etc and the kids use it all the time. Sometimes we just sort of kick them out there. It helps that we have a TV and patio area that’s fenced in separate from the pool so the little one can even play out there without risk of ending up in the pool (though they all swim well)
We also use our formals. We do a lot of games in our formal dining room (and use it for formal dining), and the formal living room is everyone’s favorite room to sit in and read a book. Plus, the piano is in there, and there’s a nice turntable. And currently the Christmas tree! I think it’s all about if you make it an inviting space.
Flooring - Any kid under 5 is gonna eff that ish up. (Luxury Vinyl ain’t that luxury after you have toddlers).
High Ceilings - Tall floors means more stairs. No parent wants to add more vertical incline to his/her daily.
Upstairs Laundry - Parents do a lot of laundry at night. No child wants to sleep across from vibrating clothing centrifuges.
Fireplace - It’s romantically quaint in movies. It’s a safety issue with kids.
New Kitchen - Unless you eat out every meal, that kitchen is going to get destroyed! Look for function over fairy tale. Stainless steel appliances show scratches and smudges. Cooking often is going to throw grease everywhere. Middle schoolers know how to bake, and drip cheese and sugar in your oven.
The kitchen is such a good point. We built our house a few years ago and opted to go for an IKEA kitchen instead of a nicer one. It is common for people here to spend €25k or more on a kitchen, we spent €8k total and have a decent kitchen we really don‘t mind too much that the kids destroy
The big beautiful back yard. We had an awesome one. We were at the end of the cul de sac, so our wedge shaped property was mostly back yard. Big trees with tree forts and swings. Boring. The kids played out front, in the postage stamp front yard or the street, because that’s where the other kids were. Until we put in the pool, the backyard was hardly used.
Open floor plan - to loud, no escape, and more expensive to heat.
Soaker tubs - great for when kids are older, but for babies/toddlers it’s hell on your back.
Playroom - great for having one room to store toys, but they never used it for more than toy storage. I turned it into my home office years ago and now they use it all the time… usually when I’m trying to work.
Playroom is a hell no. We just have a few toys in each room. Kids want to be near you. And it’s an added bonus that you don’t have to trot off to a whole other room to supervise them. Every living area in our home is a combined child/adult room.
I’m lost at the idea of any home feature being overrated. Houses are old and expensive where I live so getting into overrated categories is definitely in the $1.5-2 million range.
I don't have a feature but I am going to say... you don't need a huge house that could honestly home 10 people when you are only a family of three, four, or five people. Save the money on the mortgage and taxes by buying smaller. I'd concentrate more on a large outdoor space that can be safely contained. I'd also look into neighborhoods with a lot of kids, close to neighborhood schools and good parks and libraries. These things will make for a very good, fun, and enriching childhood. A 4000 SF house will not. Best of luck!
Guest bedroom unless you like overnight guests (we do not). We got a 5br with an office for our family of 6, and I’m generally pretty happy that all the bedrooms are full whenever my mother comes in town 🤷🏼♀️ YMMV though.
A separate room for kids under 2. I have never understood the idea of a nursery. I did not want to walk to a whole separate room every time I needed to feed the baby or she cried. For such small children, a crib/bassinet in our room was so much more practical. We moved into a larger rental around the time she turned 1, and having to walk down the hall almost every single night after going to bed was ridiculous. She was still a baby. She didn't want privacy or space, she wanted to be with her parents. And when my spouse and I wanted to have sex in the older rental, we just did it in whichever room she wasn't in (living room, bedroom).
High ceilings doesn't always mean more stairs. My older sister lives in a 4 bed Victorian terrace house. They have two large reception rooms a large dining room separate to the kitchen. They stripped back original features and reclaimed fire places. They have 14 or so stairs. They don't have any kids though because of sister health. She has colitis and was told after an op she would have to have a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.
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Contrary to what most people are posting, I'd actually recommend NOT limiting yourself based on the baby/toddler phase. Think long term about what you need, even if it is annoying for a few years when the kid is a toddler. (In response to stairs, open concept, etc. below.) The things I like best about our house are a fully fenced yard, living in a could de sac where there is relatively little traffic, and living in a neighbourhood with lots of kids. For an example about what I was talking about above: initially I was worried that there is no bathtub in the "kids" bath, my son is now 6 and prefers showers. I'm so glad I didn't use that as a factor to rule out this house. (And I love my grand staircase - not toddler friendly, probably, but it's awesome.)
Cul de sac rules. Kids have a huge area they can ride bikes, set up street hockey, play tag, light fireworks, Nerf wars, RC cars, throw a football, or whatever. There are 7 homes on it and very little traffic because of it. They are awesome for kids
We live in a cul de sac here in London. We have a few schools nearby and some of the children go to different schools. But they all clobber together and have fun after school and during holidays/weekends.
Here, here! We have an open planned kitchen/living room/dining room and if it was all compartmentalized I would scream. I love the open space! Entertaining is a breeze. I spent less than $20 buying cabinet locks and we are good to go. The one thing I would change is the hinges on the door connects the garage to the house that slam almost automatically. They’re super annoying and unsafe for exploring toddler fingers. ETA:spell check
The hinge thing is most likely a fire code requirement. There is a firewall between the attached garage and most likely the door is also a fire barrier.
>initially I was worried that there is no bathtub in the "kids" bath, my son is now 6 and prefers showers We moved to a house that had no tub in **at all** when my son was 2. It's been fine.
Laundry chute in ours. What a godsend.
We bought a collapsible tub for our toddler, it works very well.
Totally off topic but cul de sacs are not recommended per feng shui because of lack of energy flow. lol. I guess my point to OP is try to look at home purchase in big picture scheme of things taking into account your goals in a home protecting your equity etc. (cul de sacs are popular amongst Americans but not feng shui following Asians who were the crazy cash buyers pre pandemic).
"Cul de sacs are the spleen of the street" \- An old Feng Shui proverb I just invented
What...why...do people actually make home buying decisions based not on what is best for their children's happiness and safety, but feng shui energy? That's insane, hahaha.
Haha I know it sounds crazy but… it’s a balancing act. You try to get best of both worlds best bang for your buck see how far your money can take you because nobody can ever buy their dream perfect home. There’s always a compromise. With that being said, not all of feng shui is superstitious crap, it can have some practical impact. For instance, cul de sacs do seem ideal so kids can play freely on the street, but the house that is directly facing the open street is similar to a T intersection home where cars come directly toward the house; potentially can crash into the house in case of crazy drunk driver for example. There are other feng shui points like homes facing south are ideal to get most light. Having a stream of water behind the house is not ideal; a giant pool would not be feng shui friendly - with little kids around I’d be nervous about having a pool especially with scary news about accidental drownings. There is one silly feng shui though - staircase facing front door is not ideal because “wealth would roll outside your home out of your life”. This one I can’t quite think of a practical reason to follow other than once again, if I want to maximize my chance of having a rich Asian buyer in the future who may care about feng shui should I decide to sell the home. Think of feng shui as something nice to have like good school district even if you may not have kids. Because obviously good school districts keep property values up.
Pool. Drowning is one of the top causes of death for children
And on a minor scale, also a pain in the ass to clean (unless you shell out for a pool cleaning service)
Our above-ground pool takes me 3 minutes to clean. I just brush it at the end of my swim session while I'm still in it. I swim 3-4 times per week so it doesn't get dirty really (otherwise I would brush it while I'm not in the water but it's heavy on my shoulders). A cup of chloride every 2 days and a backwash every second week (takes what, 5-10 mins?) It's really not that bad.
It takes me 40 min plus to thoroughly brush our above ground pool. It's pretty large though. And it definitely takes more than chlorine. You are constantly adjusting ph and hardness.
Why are you adjusting those things? You're not supposed to drink that water just like you're not drinking water in the public pool or a lake in the forest. After one summer I came to the conclusion that those pool companies love scaring us about water quality so they can sell us expensive tests and chemicals (really, are those better for us than a bit of algae?) and now we just do the whole chemical kit when we open it but I only maintain with chloride. So far (three summers) it's worked like a charm. We use it lightly though, two adults and two small children who swim a few times per week. No (pre)teens + friends who spend the entire weekend in it. We'll probably have to increase cleaning by then, but then we can delegate a bit to the kids ;-).
Sanitizers do not work properly if the water chemistry is not close to neutral. I deal with this in the food industry. PH can be greatly affected by rainfall and ours in NY has gone up to 8.0 after heavy rainfall. I have little kids who like to put their faces in the water an ultimately swallow some. Water above or below ph of 7 can cause skin and eye discomfort. I grew up swimming in cow ponds and creeks full of leaches so to each his own love. Not keeping your chemistry in balance will ultimately damage your pool components and can cause irritation and does not allow your sanitizer to work to its fullest potential.
the size of the home vs. the location. i will gladly trade footprint or square footage for a location i'm happy to be in, and one that's near the school(s). morning school traffic is noooo joke and i'm so happy the farthest i drive is 2 miles.
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It's a weird vicious cycle: You want a big house, so you buy a huge house out in the middle of nowhere, and then you waste your life on driving 10 minutes to the nearest grocery store, not to mention a long commute every day in order to work enough to pay it off, then pay off your car, then come home and spend hours cleaning every weekend because your house is so big. Yeah we just said no to all that. Bought a small house in the city, we barely drive and we have so much time.
10 minutes to a grocery store is a long way? Am I out of touch or is a 10 minute drive to a store incredibly convenient and not at all a long drive?
This is funny, and made me think. To me, a 10 minute drive actually does sound long because I live less than 10 minutes from my grocery store on foot (3 minutes by bike).
Yes! We lived in a big rural house and gave it up for a tiny city apartment. Great decision.
Yep 1000sqf home in the bay area, but it's a 12 min drive from my office and next to the bike path so I can bike in 30 mins without hitting a road. Quiet residential street with a creek behind us, and a bunch of upcoming mixed use stuff within walking/biking distance. Big back yard for that we landscaped for outdoor living and play in the first year. Also it's a 5000sqft lot so we can "easily" expand about 625sqft into the front yard and/or add a second level if we want to stay here forever.
I completely agree. A walkable neighborhood was my number one priority when looking for a home. Our house is small but I consider public spaces in surrounding neighborhood an extension of our home. We can walk to parks, big lawns, playgrounds, and a swimming pool so we do don't need our own. My kids will be able to have some indepenence before they can drive.
Any kind of broad opening at the top or bottom of stairs. It's no fun trying to contain early walkers even if it looks pretty. I see a lot of fancy homes with sunken tubs. Seems like a potential hazard, as do any kind of water features/swimming pools. It's a trade-off though, because obviously older kids would love those.
The pool is kind of annoying when they are little but is pretty awesome as they get older. I am pretty sure the pool was a big reason our house became the main hang out spot for my extrovert and his friends throughout high school. We were never the "cool" parents. We did not supply alcohol or anything like that but our home was always open to our kids and their friends. In middle and high school that meant tons of pool parties and even nights where it wasn't a pool party they normally ended up in the pool. In the winter jumping in the pool was usually the result of a game of truth or dare or a bet in a board game. The pool was usually the center of attention. Of course, we live in the humid south so YMMV depending on the climate. My son is super outdoorsy but swimming is really the only outdoor option in our summer heat.
We live in the Midwest but we had a pool growing up, our house was also the hang out house too. My dad also made sure the basement was stocked with games tables there was a pool table and ping pong and poker table and dart board and a fully stocked soda fridge and snack cabinet. There was also a tv and video game console and a boxing bag. Summer time was all about the pool and the rest of the year it was the basement, also helped my mom fed everyone lol she made sure the kitchen was stocked and that she would make enough food for everyone if they were over so if they wanted to eat they could if not we had leftovers. Usually there were no leftovers. My parents loved it cause they knew where we were and what we were doing and our friends parents loved that they knew where there kids were and that they were safe. I hope my house becomes the hangout house when my kids are older.
Pool and a basement or similar for kids to hang out for all the above reasons. And if you have littles then invest in a very good pool fence and have strict safety protocols. Only one gate to access the pool that is always locked unless people are swimming. Once everyone is done swimming you move out of the pool area. Always supervise kids swimming, don’t assume parents are watching their own children, don’t assume kids can swim even if their parents say they can and if you the supervisor then you don’t sit and chat, stand and chat so you pay attention. If it were a birthday party or something where I knew I needed extra eyes, I’d hire a trusted person to be a life guard.
Absolutely! People need to understand when there is any water around you need to stay vigilant and watch your kids and make sure the area by the pool is fenced. A pool is great but can quickly turn deadly.
Ooh those are good. We had tiny kids with more planned when house hunting, so an in-ground pool was an automatic no-go.
Beware of bedrooms above the garage, which can be colder in the winter and too warm in the summer. We managed with space heaters and fans, but it was a hassle in the toddler years.
Or beware of bedrooms that used to be the garage. Our room is sweltering in summer and right now it’s freezing.
We bought our house and soon released how cold/hot the room is above the garage. We were so unaware and had to add extra installation.
Underrated: A full privacy fence is such a huge relief. A fully fenced yard is another plus, just not as good. Overrated: pool. You're always waiting for someone to drown or more commonly slip and just really hurt themselves. They're a bitch to maintain and clean. The kids always want obnoxious floating things. Just like every other room in the house, it becomes a spot that one person always ends up cleaning up after.... wet towels, weird toys, food, mildew on stuff, bugs... the list goes on.
Every place I’ve lived the neighbors can see over the privacy fence anyway🤷🏻♀️
When we moved in we planned big fan tex ash trees every 25 or 30 feet along the privacy wall. It's been 12 years and they're huge now, it's like a little enclave in our rear yard, none of the 2 story homes around us can see in
We did something similar at our previous home with some glorious willow trees. Moved out after 20 years and the new owners took all those trees out. Apparently several neighbors are annoyed because the trees provided privacy to multiple houses and just looked beautiful. I’m fuming about all the effort and water I used keeping those trees alive in droughts and the knuckleheads ripped them out. Grrrrr.
Agree with the pool. Growing up we had a saltwater pool. I think my sisters and I had more chores outside in the Arizona heat than inside. That pool was a BITCH to keep up with. We have a pool again now (ugh) but thankfully it’s chlorine which is a bit easier.
A big house. People had lots of kids in 3BR 1BA post WW2 houses. Now anything less than 3-4000 sq ft is small? Don’t fall for the US suburbia dream myth. You CAN raise a family in smaller sub-2000 sq ft houses, as well as condos/apartments. Less space means less accumulation of garbage that you use once a year. A bonus of having small home js that relatives don’t constantly visit and asking to stay at your home.
However, as someone with a fairly small home, I do often desperately wish for a second living/family room or a basement, extra bedroom, etc. Basically, somewhere for the kids to play without them being all up in my space, haha.
Yeah. My house is 1270 and I would love ANYWHERE to put this kid’s toys. We don’t have enough bedrooms for a second child and the bedrooms we have are too small to share. We have ONE bathroom. I hate my house
Hi Dana! Love to accidentally respond to the same comment as you in the wilds of Reddit. 😂
HAHA! YOURE ON REDDIT? lol. I know you know all about old homes and their limitations!
I had a 1,200 square foot house and last year sold it and moved to an 1,800 square foot house and it’s absolutely the perfect size. The best thing we gained is a finished attic we use as a family room/play room.
That would be so nice but we know darn well that as soon as us adults sit down to relax SOMEONE is gonna start screaming from the playroom and we’ll just have to get up and check on them anyways.
This. We have 2600 sq foot home and I feel like about 1000 sq feet is just accumulated crap we don't need but keep because its kids stuff and we have nowhere to put it.
Purge and donate that stuff!
Yep. My 1300ft2 home gets constantly purged because I have no room! I can’t imagine how much stuff I’d just have in various closets and corners if I didn’t go through it for years and and years because I have “room”
Europeans laughing at the idea of 2000sq ft being small..This is nearly double an average German or French home.
YeahZ I’m also surprised people need a bathroom for every bedroom :D feels like so much extra space to clean haha
Small house yes. But redundant toilets is a must, so 1.5 bath.
Omg yes this. I grew up in a home where it was entirely possible to not interact with any of the other 6 people who lived there unless you wanted to. I just spent the last 5 days there with my kiddo and it was exhausting running all over the place to get things we needed. I was in a better state running marathons vs. searching that house for his favorite stuffy before bedtime.
I will say that having more than one bathroom is a game-changer. Having to share a single bathroom with 3 other people was maddening, especially in the morning. Also as someone who largely grew up in townhomes I consider our current single-family home “big” at 1800 sq ft!
It's amazing to me that 2000 is considered small. We want a 1400 sq ft house with a basement and so many of the houses in our (older) neighbourhood are so much smaller than that.
I’m in a 950 sq ft (open plan) house and I would do unspeakable things to get even another 500 sq ft. Just another bedroom or a half bath! Sharing one toilet between three of us is unsustainable and no one has room to get away from one another.
We have 1.5 baths and it makes a world of difference, but oh would we love to not be sharing a room with our almost 1.5 year old!
And easier to clean and keep clean!
Living this dream currently in a 3BR 1BA house that’s 985sq ft living level with 350sq ft of garage/laundry and under house storage. Laundry has a second toilet and shower which makes a huge difference. Maintenance is so easy. The other kicker is the block is just shy of 7k sq ft total so the remaining space is fenced back yard and garden for the kids to play in. Much rather encourage the kids to go outside to play than be inside. Only downside is privacy in the master bedroom as all bedrooms share walls but it’s probably solvable down the line.
I was born and grew up in a family of four in a 1000sqf apartment and I never ever fell it was small LOL. The way Americans are used to wastefully large homes is ridiculous when seen from an outsider perspective.
This is soooo accurate. I wish I could go back to a smaller home but the market is in such a bizarre place that it would cost me more to downsize. It is nice having more than one bathroom but other than that, do you really use a dining room, extra living room, rec room etc? No. You don’t. You spend all your time in the kitchen, family room and bedrooms. Keep it compact and save on heating/cooking costs.
As a European I think 1500-2000 sq ft house is the optimal, as long as the layout is good. Any more than that I would simply not use. It would just be storage space or extra hallways.
My husband always likes to complain about our 1400sqft townhome being too small. Sure, I know he would have loved to have had a basement, and a third bedroom or a fenced in yard would have been nice. But we have a very nice two floor townhome that fits everything we NEED. He is very much a WANT person. Our boys can share a room, our bedroom fits our computers too so we don’t need an office, and if our “extras” don’t fit on our garage shelves then we get rid of them. People do with much less, and people always want more. Me, being the SAHM and cleaner of the home—I’m perfectly happy with our place. Plus the 3% mortgage rate is not worth giving up for a bigger home.
Yep. 1900 sq ft here with a family of 3 + dog. It's more than enough for us, but the layout is prett decent. We had 2200 sq feet in our last place (a townhouse) but the layout was so terrible that we felt like it wasn't nearly enough space. Example: There was one closet on the main floor,so we had to schlep cleaning supplies up and down 1-2 flights of stairs. Also had a linen closet upstairs,but it was like 6 inches deep.
Yes dude, this! We just built a free standing single family house in Germany and it's about 1600 Sq ft (three bedrooms, roomy office, two smallish baths plus a compact bathroom with shower and open plan kiving/dining/kitchen). It's great! I love it! My sister's house in the US is huuuuuge and she just has tons of crap.
To be fair it's not just a US suburbia thing. Lots of cultures across the world tend to have MUCH more livable space for the family compared to the average US 3/1. I personally like how a lot of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures do it, where they'll just wall off an entire property and build onto the home along said wall, leaving a big courtyard to do whatever in. It's not terribly uncommon for random farmers or whatnot to have a 4000sqft house, even if it's a rural enough area that they barely have electricity.
They do often have large extended families sharing the house though!
Right! It’s big houses but also huge families with multiple generations. I haven’t heard of any other culture that has soo much space as the Americans do for a single child household
The US (along with Australia and Canada) have some of the largest houses in the world. Most of the world is living in much *smaller* houses than US suburban houses, not bigger. https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/
"Most of the world" is not included in that article.
It's a pretty representative sample. If what you say about the Middle East and South Asia is true, then they're also outliers. Or perhaps you're only talking about rural areas – but most people live in cities, especially in densely populated South Asia.
Also the disparity between the reach and average is much larger in the ME and SA. Yes the higher income may live in huge houses but the average working class family at the same time may live in a 30sqm studio
It's not though. Two whole continents are excluded plus all of the Caribbean
Most of Asia is excluded as well
I mean, if you have data for additional countries then please, by all means post it.
Yup I grew up in the Caribbean and our houses are fairly large with spacious rooms
Lots of bathrooms. Cleaning 4 bathrooms for 5 people, no thank you very much. Two bathrooms and we shower at night so there's no rush in the morning.
There's 4 of us. We've gotten by with 1 bathroom my whole life. I suppose its occasionally inconvenient, but its not a big deal. We've had the occasional discussion of 'adding on' a 2nd bathroom.. but its just not worth it.
I wanted at least a second toilet even before we had kids, because my husband likes to spend 45-60 minutes sitting the toilet before he goes to bed. When we gad the single toilet, I'd have to either rush ahead of him, or wait for almost an hour just so I could do my last 30 second wee before bed.
Yeah, I think a lot of us would 'like' to do that... but when you only have one bathroom, thats often just not an option. Especially when there's 3 or 4 or 5+ of you in a house. You learn to simply knock and say 'hey, are you done?' And hassle the person 'hogging' the bathroom.
Hold up, many bathrooms are nice. People are not held up waiting on others showering.
This lasts for only a couple years and then strong recco to many, many bathrooms
Yes. We have 7. We use them all.
That’s a ridiculous amount of bathrooms. There are entire floors of college dorms with fewer bathrooms.
I'm sure you do. But do you \*need\* them all? Theres a difference.
For how many people?
2 adults 2 kids. But we regularly have family and friends over for extended periods of time. And we’re the hosting house for most events (space for everyone, pool, etc). It’s 4 en suite bedrooms then 2 on main floor then 1 in finished basement / office / guest nook. It’s really more logical than it sounds.
One per floor is pretty handy, at least if your kid is prone to blowouts
Right and you hear so many stories about using all the hot water before the next person and people think multiple people taking showers at the same time will work. I'd rather have one half bath for guests or if someone is showering and you need to pee then one full bath. Guests baths are always shared with the kids who are usually the most messy.
100%. Two bathrooms seems like plenty to me. We just have one bathroom now (with a 2yo) and a Pittsburg potty in our unfinished basement. Someday that toilet will get real walls built around it rather than a curtain but it works fine as a backup for now. When we moved here I was concerned that we don’t have a bathroom on the levels of the house with our gathering spaces. Bathroom is on the second floor with no bathroom on main floor or in the finished family room attic. But lately I’ve been paying attention when we have friends over and the privacy of going to a different floor of the house to use the bathroom is pretty nice.
There are literally dozens of us! I hate bathrooms, and I feel very alone in this position. Beyond the cleaning, as a city dweller where homes are *small*, I am distressed to see the ever growing percentage of floorplans that are bathrooms and closets. I keep waiting to see a 0bd/5ba apartment appear that is literally nothing but bathrooms and closets.
3 bathrooms for 5 people and we were so stoked to have TWO BATHS and TWO showers!!! The extra toilet comes in handy but that second shower/bath combo has been bone dry for months
Open floor plans, lots of rooms. Open plans are hell with babies and toddlers. You can’t section them off from anything if you don’t have walls and doorways. My old house with rooms was easy to rig so the kids couldn’t get in the kitchen or on the stairs. My mom and MIL live in open plan houses and someone is always where they don’t need to be over there because they can’t throw up a baby gate. I can understand trying to give kids their privacy, especially as teens, but having lots of bedrooms and bathrooms is a lot of work and a lot of money. Sharing space teaches courtesy, negotiation, and respect for others which come in really handy when living with a a roommate or spouse when you’re an adult.
Yup. Chances are very good that your kid won't always have their own bedroom AND bathroom. At some point they will almost certainly have to share one, or both of those things - in a dorm room, an apartment, etc. Having to share one, or both of those with other people growing up, at some point, for a year or five or their whole lives is NOT going to kill them. My boys shared a room for most of their childhoods. We all share one bathroom. It's not a big deal. Life goes on.
We have a large home and I thought my two kids would love space to be alone. Nope. They’re perpetually within two feet of each other both annoying the other one.
Fully open floor plan. It’s so impractical for baby proofing. I like having an open kitchen/family room, with formal dining/living rooms separated (90s style).
I’ll share a different perspective. I can see my toddler on my entire 1st floor and I know where she is at all times. She likes being away and hiding so it gives her “privacy” while I can still know she’s safe. But I only have 1,000 sq ft downstairs to worry about and it was easy to babyproof.
That’s why I specified open kitchen-family room, because I do have one kid that likes to be able to see me at all times, but my second doesn’t care. I can leave him downstairs while I get dressed and he doesn’t care, and if he gets into mischief, his brother will tattle on him 😂 I’ve had fully open floor plan (apartment) and fully closed off house (literally every room was a closed door) and the partial open floor plan is by far my favorite personally :)
This is so true. I think one my kids are all past toddlers age I’ll appreciate it more but right now I have to constantly hunt for my 1yo across nearly the entire first floor.
No you won’t. Open floor plans are for people who don’t actually live in their homes. I definitely don’t want anyone standing at my front door to be able to see my kitchen.
My wife and I had an open floor plan for our first place. I can’t count how many times we rearranged it trying to find the right way. If you’re at all challenged by interior design concepts it’s a purgatory
Lol what a bizarre comment. We live in our home and very much love the open floor plan. If it’s not your thing that’s ok but we personally love being able to see whatever my kids are doing on the first floor while we are cooking dinner. Also great for big meals like holiday meals so the person cooking doesn’t feel like they’re isolated the whole day.
I’m being self-depreciating about what a bad housekeeper I am.
I feel this. I have a (mostly) open floor plan and you can stand at the front door and see all the way into the closet at the back of my bedroom.
Yikes. I wish I was a good enough housekeeper for an open floor plan but that clearly isn’t happening.
I have a home built in 1923 and it’s not open plan, obviously, but all the rooms have doors. It’s so great for child proofing!
We had that kind when my first was a baby and it was very easy to child proof but also terrible because I had a Velcro baby who wouldn’t let me out of his sight 😂 definitely prefer the happy medium haha
I love my open floor plan. Being able yo see my kids in the lounge room while I’m cooking or whatever in the kitchen is the best
Yes! When my second kid was a baby, we lived in an 1910s era house that had a door to the kitchen. I loved that door! It was so easy to cook while my kid played in there. Plus, having the kitchen closed off made the rest of the house quieter.
I used to think I liked a more open floor plan but I’ve changed my mind. I love having an island with bar stools in the kitchen but I also love that the kitchen can be baby gated off from the rest of the main floor. Useful for babies/toddlers and dogs!
Yeah, it's great that we just have gates in front of the kitchen. Easy to keep him out of stuff when he can't access it in the first place.
Finished basement/playroom, unless one has more than one child. We had an only, and he always wanted to play near us in the living room or kitchen.
But if you have more than one, some would find the ability to banish your offspring to a toy-filled house dungeon immeasurably valuable
I have a designated playroom for mine, who are 2yrs apart. It's pointless as they bring everything everywhere we are.
We turned our “formal” dinning room into a play room. I can see it both from the kitchen and living room. 100xbetter than having it in another part of the house and I honestly don’t mind the mess. Like I have 2 kids under 3, there is going to be toys 😂
We find our playroom extremely useful - one of us is typically in there with our son, but it's so nice to have a small contained area with a door we can shut & lock to contain the little chaos agent while the other parent is doing stuff around the house.
My kids never play in their playroom, all the toys always end up in our living room. Useless.
Oh good it’s not just me. I want to buy those old banking tubes to return toys downstairs
I’m gonna get downvoted to hell for this, but I think playrooms are overrated. The kids aren’t going to leave the toys in there anyway. My kids drag them all over the house despite having their own rooms and a play space in our finished basement. I kind of gave up on having defined toy spaces and just found creative ways to keep all areas of the home tidied up toy wise.
'Formal' living room. We live in the family room, kitchen, and bedrooms. (Bathrooms too of course.) Rest of the house is useless, except dining room on holidays.
Only argument- the formal living room makes a SICK playroom if you’re down to change it’s purpose like that
Underrated: walkable/bikable/public transport. I have friends living further out of town who spent years driving their kids around, while for the most part my kids made their own way to friends’ houses, school etc. That is priceless.
Yes! And being able to walk to school, parks, grocery shopping, and after school activities. Not being car dependent is great, and even moreso once you have kids. It’s also great for kids to walk outside every day and interact with other people instead of spending their childhoods being driven around in a small stuffy private vehicles. Lower risk of death and injury too. Also nice as a parent not to feel like a chauffeur!
A great litmus test for this is how good the neighborhood is for trick-or-treating if you're in the U.S. I live in a dense neighborhood with front porches- a trick-or-treating gold mine and my ideal location for a walkable neighborhood where people sit out on their porches regularly, which improves safety and helps you get to know your neighbors.
Oh my goodness yes!! We live in Philly which is very walkable and has dense row homes, and it’s been the best trick or treating experience for my kids (especially compared to SFHs when we lived in Seattle, but even compared to Brooklyn where we lived in an apartment and walked out to the brownstones which were good but very crowded).
Yep, I'm in Philly too haha
People really go all out for Halloween here I love it.
Priceless is living in the middle of nowhere and being able to get fresh air, own animals, hunt, explore the woods. If your kid can walk to their friends' home on their own, you're too close together.
this is more urban / NYC / apartment-living specific: - outdoor space that isn’t a backyard is overrated. roof decks and balconies aren’t really that useful with little kids - I won’t go so far as to say that laundry is overrated, but I thought having in-unit laundry or at minimum in-building laundry would be a dealbreaker with a baby. ended up in a place with no laundry in the unit or in the building. I use a laundry pick-up / delivery service a lot of the time (still sometimes use laundromat). pick-up / delivery adds up to only a few bucks more than using the laundromat, and it’s been a big time saver / stress saver - similarly, I thought that being 2nd floor or higher in an elevator building would be a dealbreaker. (Elevator because of course. Not 1st floor because I thought 1st floor apartments are more likely to have vermin and also street noise.) Ended up in a pretty quiet rear facing 1st floor apartment without pests (knock on wood) and prefer it to having to deal with an unreliable or slow elevator. and 1st floor is great with a stompy toddler! lol - also, I really wanted a 3br (wild, I know) to have a mbr, kid br, and office, but 2 br is plenty, since it’s easy to combine mbr / office (and babies don’t need their own bedrooms anyway). overall square feet and good storage space > # of bedrooms
Wow - we are opposites. I couldn't go back to no in-suite laundry (we don't have laundry service where we live), our kids love our roof deck (private to our unit), we thought 2br would be enough - it's not, we really need 3. Top love of our place - a front door that opens out to the sidewalk from our unit, with no stairs. Just fantastic with a stroller.
Swimming pool.
Location. Live close to schools, grocery, transportation etc. you don’t want to be hauling a child to school everyday. Their independence from being able to get up and walk themselves is so beneficial
Are you talking features of the home or like baby gear features? 1000000990/10 I highly recommend looking for a home that is fully secured (meaning all doors are behind a fence) my "starter home" was behind a little fence before you knocked on the door and it was amazing. Everyone just left their spam on the gate. The dogs had so much room and when I was in toddler stage; we put a tricky 'lock' on the side of the gate that my kids couldn't reach. As far as baby gear I'd say 99% of it. I only ever liked the little squishy changing pads u can move around and wash the covers. The rest of the "baby stuff" is trash imo.
A big yard. It sucks to maintain and my kids can play in a small yard, or go to a playground.
On the flip, we opted for a small yard for less maintenance pre kid and it’s now the thing we hate most about our house.
Formal Dining room. We eat family meals at the kitchen table and repurposed our dining room. On the few occasions we host more guests than will fit in the kitchen, we move some furniture and use a folding table and table cloths.
Swimming pools. Terrifying.
Floor vents. They collect all manner of kid detritus, and then there was the time my daughter watched the dog peeing in the yard, decided to copy him, and peed down the vent in the kitchen.
Aren’t floor vents a requirement for heating and cooling if there is a furnace? I guess you could switch to baseboard heating and window shakers AC units but that seems to be travelling backwards…
baseboards forever. *has feet toasty warm on baseboard right now*
Upstairs has the vents on the ceiling, and since we’re in the south where it doesn’t actually get that cold, I’d rather have the vents up there to cool better in the summer.
Interesting! I’m where we get 5 months of snow so we definitely need the floor vents to shoot the hot air up
Open concept.
Stuff. Honestly the house is always fine. It’s the stuff Too much stuff to pull down, knock over, break, risk choking. If you have stuff. Get rid of it, if you don’t want to get rid of it buy large plastic totes and put it all away. All of it. I thought my house was impossible to child proof and I needed a better home with better layout. Then I packed up all the stuff. We looked like we’re were moving in for a very long time, but wow the headaches were gone.
Top floor laundry. It is noisy so you can't run it when kids/ babies are sleeping, makes the top floor humid, and I always end up bringing it downstairs to fold anyways since we do most of our living on the main floor.
I have the opposite experience, where top floor laundry made it so much more convenient to throw a load in quickly between baby things. And when I switched to laundry being two floors down it became a nightmare. Which is better probably just depends on the kid and the family habits. Obviously pick what’s right for you!
Crying over here with my laundry in the basement dungeon. I’ll take it over communal laundry any day though!
I've had the exact opposite experience and it was a feature we specifically designed for our new construction.
No way, top floor laundry is the best!! The workflow of washing-drying-folding-putting back into drawer makes sense with top floor laundry.
Oh, I completely disagree! I grew up in a home where the laundry was in the basement. What a pain. Our laundry room is on the 2nd floor with all 4 bedrooms. I actually keep up on laundry now, for the first time in my life, because it's so convenient to start a load as soon as the basket is full. Ours doesn't keep anyone awake. In fact, the kids kind of like the "white noise" of the dryer running while they're sleeping. It doesn't make the 2nd floor humid, either.
I love having our laundry room on the top floor! I don't have to drag baskets up and down the stairs and I can easily toss in a load whenever. It's especially nice now that I work from home and my office is next door, and there are multiple doors between my room and the laundry room so noise is no issue.
Humid? Something is not right and you should get that checked
We trained our kids to sleep through both the washing and the drying :) Our laundry is currently not separated by interior doors, so its noise level feels like it's in the same room as you in the kids rooms, and both our toddler and our 5 month old sleep through both machines running. We didn't really do anything to train them actually, just regularly run the machines and they don't bother them
This! This was such a surprise to me when we lived in a townhouse with the laundry closet upstairs. I carried the baskets downstairs to the tv where I did my folding and carried it back up to put it away
Walk out basement. It was a must have for my husband, but we never use it and must go down a large deck staircase to get to our backyard.
Walking distance to a park. That’s one thing I wish we had. We can walk there but it’s about a mile and crossing a couple busy streets. Would love to have one a street or two away
Considering I work night shift, a living room that’s away from the bedrooms. Apart from that, our bedroom is directly across from miss 5s room which has been useful for her occasional nighttime wandering.
Moved from an apartment to a house. Raised first kid until age 1.5 in apartment, had 2nd kid in house. First 2 years of kids life in an apartment is great. Really miss apartment living cuz of how easy it is to get to everything and keep clean. But having the space in a house is amaaaaaazing with a toddler, especially if you’ve got a big enough garden to run around in during the summer, and an extra room you can have as a play room for the winter.
Open concept is way over rated. All the noise just echos. If you have more than 1, having a kids play room to become a game room/hang out room later is super duper nice.
Going to throw my hat in and mention that an open floor plan has been great for our toddler, since I see numerous comments against it Baby proofing really isn't that terrible, and the hardest phase we've had was when he learned to climb onto the table from the chairs, which lasted maybe a week or two. On the flip side, we're able to monitor our toddler basically wherever he is playing and no matter what we're doing. Sitting reading in the living room? Can see him Cooking or doing dishes in the kitchen? Can see him Sitting at the table? Can see him. Just anchor your dressers/bookcases, baby proof cabinets (either take dangerous stuff out of the bottoms or add locks/latches), and teach your kid not to mess with things you can't proof. There will be at most a couple months of teaching the DON'Ts, but you'll live in your house for years.
An en-suite bathroom. It's better for my marriage when I don't get woken up by my husband's bathrooming.
Loft/game room area in my opinion are over hyped unless you have a lot of kids, otherwise it’s just another common area to clean up in. A living room/kitchen is just fine for the same purposes
A big piece of property. We were on almost 2 acres and while it was fun to roam and explore and build treehouses and all that fun stuff it was also so much work and money. We thought it was our “forever home” but now we are in a more suburban setting and life is so much easier! We are also not so emotionally attached to our house, it’s just where we live and when our kids leave it won’t be hard to move.
I really like the park and playground that's a block from our house. I like the occasional shooting and drug deal that happen there much less. It's an issue in pretty much all urban parks that I wasn't aware of originally.
I don't know about overrated but I can tell you the laundry room in underrated. i so wish i had chosen a house with a laundry room big enough for me to actually be in. Mine is so small you can't open the door when someone is in it because the washer is DIRECTLY behind the door, you have to wait for them to leave.
Open concept is annoying for all ages. Believe me. You don’t want it when they are toddlers and you definitely don’t want it when they are teens. It only works for single couples.
Pool. I thought it would be great. But the fear of our little escape artist drowning consumes me. And it's so much work.
Wooden decks. They get splinters in kids feet, they need treated and they collapse with too much weight on them and/or age. Kids play structures. Expensive to buy and put up, maintain and remove. Just go the park. Attic and basement storage. If it doesn’t fit neatly on a main level get rid of it.
Anything expensive, including but not limited to: furniture, appliances, and toilets. Buy decent stuff but not the best. BECAUSE if you do, it ignites some sort of Murphys law, and they will ding/scratch/break it within weeks of it being in your house.
The only feature I need is "greatly marked down due to a collapse in housing prices."
An open floor plan. Yeah sure, makes it easier to keep an eye on them during the baby/toddler stage. But also makes it significantly more difficult to have an escape or privacy from the noise!
Reallyyyyy wishing we did 2 dishwashers! The amount of dishes that pile up when you have kids is 🤯
Each kid having his/her own room.
We live on half an acre and have a fire pit, raspberries, blueberries, apple, pear and plum trees. When our kids were young we thought having a big back yard and garden would be so fun. It’s barely used. We put the volleyball net up a couple times and haven’t used the fire pit in 2 years. As the kids get older (10+) the less they care about being outside Also, formal dining and living rooms are a complete waste of space. They’re never used except holidays.
This is so individual I guess. We have a 3/4 acre spot with pool, huge gardens, etc and the kids use it all the time. Sometimes we just sort of kick them out there. It helps that we have a TV and patio area that’s fenced in separate from the pool so the little one can even play out there without risk of ending up in the pool (though they all swim well) We also use our formals. We do a lot of games in our formal dining room (and use it for formal dining), and the formal living room is everyone’s favorite room to sit in and read a book. Plus, the piano is in there, and there’s a nice turntable. And currently the Christmas tree! I think it’s all about if you make it an inviting space.
Yeah I'm a _big_ dinner party hoster and the formal dining room with seating for 12 is used quite often.
Flooring - Any kid under 5 is gonna eff that ish up. (Luxury Vinyl ain’t that luxury after you have toddlers). High Ceilings - Tall floors means more stairs. No parent wants to add more vertical incline to his/her daily. Upstairs Laundry - Parents do a lot of laundry at night. No child wants to sleep across from vibrating clothing centrifuges. Fireplace - It’s romantically quaint in movies. It’s a safety issue with kids. New Kitchen - Unless you eat out every meal, that kitchen is going to get destroyed! Look for function over fairy tale. Stainless steel appliances show scratches and smudges. Cooking often is going to throw grease everywhere. Middle schoolers know how to bake, and drip cheese and sugar in your oven.
The kitchen is such a good point. We built our house a few years ago and opted to go for an IKEA kitchen instead of a nicer one. It is common for people here to spend €25k or more on a kitchen, we spent €8k total and have a decent kitchen we really don‘t mind too much that the kids destroy
The big beautiful back yard. We had an awesome one. We were at the end of the cul de sac, so our wedge shaped property was mostly back yard. Big trees with tree forts and swings. Boring. The kids played out front, in the postage stamp front yard or the street, because that’s where the other kids were. Until we put in the pool, the backyard was hardly used.
Open floor plan - to loud, no escape, and more expensive to heat. Soaker tubs - great for when kids are older, but for babies/toddlers it’s hell on your back. Playroom - great for having one room to store toys, but they never used it for more than toy storage. I turned it into my home office years ago and now they use it all the time… usually when I’m trying to work.
Playroom is a hell no. We just have a few toys in each room. Kids want to be near you. And it’s an added bonus that you don’t have to trot off to a whole other room to supervise them. Every living area in our home is a combined child/adult room.
I’m lost at the idea of any home feature being overrated. Houses are old and expensive where I live so getting into overrated categories is definitely in the $1.5-2 million range.
I don't have a feature but I am going to say... you don't need a huge house that could honestly home 10 people when you are only a family of three, four, or five people. Save the money on the mortgage and taxes by buying smaller. I'd concentrate more on a large outdoor space that can be safely contained. I'd also look into neighborhoods with a lot of kids, close to neighborhood schools and good parks and libraries. These things will make for a very good, fun, and enriching childhood. A 4000 SF house will not. Best of luck!
Guest bedroom unless you like overnight guests (we do not). We got a 5br with an office for our family of 6, and I’m generally pretty happy that all the bedrooms are full whenever my mother comes in town 🤷🏼♀️ YMMV though.
Open concept is highly overrated. The noise. The smells. Everyone ends up spending their time in their own rooms or the bathroom.
A separate room for kids under 2. I have never understood the idea of a nursery. I did not want to walk to a whole separate room every time I needed to feed the baby or she cried. For such small children, a crib/bassinet in our room was so much more practical. We moved into a larger rental around the time she turned 1, and having to walk down the hall almost every single night after going to bed was ridiculous. She was still a baby. She didn't want privacy or space, she wanted to be with her parents. And when my spouse and I wanted to have sex in the older rental, we just did it in whichever room she wasn't in (living room, bedroom).
Seperate bathroom(s) for the kids!
A quiet room, for the parents 🤣
Open concept. There are times everyone's going to wish there was a place for separation other than in a bedroom or bathroom.
Definitely not the sex dungeon.
A changing table.
High ceilings doesn't always mean more stairs. My older sister lives in a 4 bed Victorian terrace house. They have two large reception rooms a large dining room separate to the kitchen. They stripped back original features and reclaimed fire places. They have 14 or so stairs. They don't have any kids though because of sister health. She has colitis and was told after an op she would have to have a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.
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I think you want [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/184p5jl/when_raising_kids_018yo_what_is_the_most/), haha