I was wondering why people were suddenly randomly talking about houseboats then realized it was from my post #12. Stupid autocorrect. I think I had meant to type “house that is easy to maintain” and somehow it auto corrected to " houseboat is easy to maintain ". So no my big goal is not a nice little houseboat, just downsize to a nice little house. We have a lot of space that is unused except for storing junk. I’d be happy in half the space (sans junk of course).randomly
Though a houseboat is not completely off the table
We have an eat in kitchen, that’s what we use on a daily basis. But I love having a pretty formal dining room. It doesn’t get used much, but I love having it for when we do. I not only use it for family holiday dinners, but when I have the occasional large party, I pull all the chairs away, and that’s where the food goes, like a buffet table. People get their food and oftentimes we stand and mingle around there instead of the kitchen, thankfully.
I could absolutely do without my living room, it’s big, decorated nicely and I call it the museum. I’d love to have that square footage attached to my smallish FR. we are actually considering changing it to the dining room at some point.
We have a small kitchen (only an island - no room for a real kitchen table) and so we eat in our dining room every day. The only unused room in my house right now is my daughter’s bedroom (since she is grown and launched and has her own apartment 3 states away). We have a small house - 3 br - 2 baths. All three of our living spaces - living room, family room and “bonus room” get used. They each have their own purposes - living room is a favorite reading location for me, family room is where my husband uses his computer (and has the best TV), and the bonus room has exercise equipment which I use daily (and is the “laundry space”.) Bedroom number 3 has my computer - so that gets used also.
I have been saying lately as an empty nester how wonderful it is that we have a small house. Makes us less motivated to down-size and move someplace else (as so many of my contemporaries and neighbors have already done).
When we have hosted large gatherings (holidays with 20ish people) we run a long table down the living room/dining room. The kitchen table usually gets the beverages and desserts if we aren’t using the kitchen island as a buffet. Sometimes if we need the seating at the island or the kitchen table we use the desk area in the kitchen for beverages. The likelihood that we will have a big event like that again is now low, but we did have a big event at the house this past February. We will probably host Thanksgiving again, as we have in many past years, but its unlikely to be 20+. We have also used the dining room table for buffet style parties when there is no formal seating, and people spread around (eg watching a sports event in the family room, a farewell party we hosted, etc). We rebuilt our deck a few years ago and fixed up the back yard, and now use that space too.
We almost bought this glass kitchen table that opened up with leaves, but never did.
@conmama , I think you should reverse your living room/family room situation! Make the smaller room the museum!!! Enjoy the space of the larger room!
No one has mentioned basements? Our basement = laundry area, storage areas, eBay area for my H which I try hard to get him to keep controlled so his stuff doesn’t flow into a small rec room-ish area with a love seat and chair, smaller tv and exercise bike.
I think need for a dining room also depends how/if you entertain. We are very chill entertainers when we do and anything formal is NOT going to happen on my dime. Doesn’t mean we are eating Easter dinner on paper plates (we do use the dining room then) I would have no qualms serving a special dinner on whatever table arrangement in whatever room.
H and I may be odd but when it’s finally time to sit down at night and perhaps watch a little tv we have different spots. We watch NOTHING together on tv! Completely different tv habits. So both our living room and our sunporch (used all year around) are used regularly. I always think it’s funny to see which room/adult our dog decides to camp out with at night!
“Our kitchen breakfast room has a table that has three leaves in it. We have done a lot of less formal “important occasion” dining, and when there are more people, we add the leaves to that table. We can easily seat 12 people there.”
We do too. But our close family …just us, siblings, parents and nieces/nephews is 24 people! And we often have cousins, aunts/ uncles etc. like I said. The fact that the dining room doesn’t get used all that much does,t matter because when we need it (we can get 18 people there and another 16 in the breakfast nook) we need it. Happy to have the room we do.
We still live in our starter home–1200 sf. So yeah, our dining room is where we eat, do our work, etc. Our “second” and someday retirement home is a whopping 1600 ft. feels huge to me, but the extra bedrooms mean places for guests. Still eat in the DR there in cold weather; the kitchen is slightly better than the first house, but still not an EIK.
I’m so used to small places that I was curious about what the headline could mean!
@abasket, our basement used to be where the kids retreated to to play/hang out. We refinished it a few yers ago and I use it as a home office. It has a living room, bedroom, kitchenette, bathroom, desk area. It gets used.
I was desperate to downsize to a condo with zippo maintenance but my hubby wasn’t ready so we have another house. It’s a bit smaller than our last house but not by much. Most used room in any of our houses (we’ve moved a lot so have had many) = kitchen. Least used room in any of our houses = guest room, but nice to have when people come to visit. We use our dining room fairly often as we haven’t had a kitchen that could accommodate more than 4 for over 15 years. (Funny how the two houses we had when DD was a baby had huge eat in kitchen areas and we were never able to find that again).
I downsized from 3200 sq ft (with large unfinished basement & 3 car garage in addition) to 1100 sq ft (apartment). The 2nd bedroom and bath are rarely used (only when kids/guests are here). The rest is pretty heavily used. We almost never used the library in the big house (ex-H insisted on it), and I was more likely to set up my laptop on the dining table (open floor plan) than iny home office.
@abasket , we definitely have thought of that and it makes sense. Here is where we keep getting tripped up. When we furnished th LV, we made the drastic mistake of purchasing expensive furniture. Why we thought we would actually use that room is beyond me. It’s so pretty, not just the 2 semi circular sofas, but the tables, accessories, etc. I think it would kill us to sell them, and it seems silly to put in storage. We need to come to terms with letting the sofas go, but we’re not there yet!
Our house is about 2400 square feet, maybe more depending on what gets counted. We enlarged the kitchen and added a screen porch a few years ago.
Basement - used to do laundry there, now used for storage, a small home gym, and it has two futons which get used when relatives are here for the holidays, it’s only semi-finished
Basement powder room - used occasionally
Kitchen - most used. It’s now eat-in and we do eat here a lot
Rear Screen Porch - used every day from spring to late fall (last year till November!) We eat out there and there’s a small couch where you can read the newspaper. My favorite room in the house.
Dining Room - before the renovation we ate all our meals here, now the table collects over flow from work
Front Hall - used every day
Powder room - used every day
Living Room - used every day - it houses the TV
Three bedrooms on the second floor - only Master bedroom getting used currently
Laundry - used every week
Master Bath - used every day
Hall Bath - used occasionally, every day when kids are home or people are visiting
Attic Bedroom - used by kids or visitors
Attic Store Room - houses art supplies and overflow books
Our basement has a small guest room (but no windows or egress down there, since it’s not “official” space, and the rest is storage. Gradually working on cleaning out the clutter. S1’s former bedroom(10x11) is my sewing area and the excess has migrated to S2’s room (9x10) now that he is overseas. I expect he’ll be back temporarily at some point, so I haven’t completely taken it over. Need to get projects done so I can get this stuff out of here!
I always feel like a contrarian in these type of threads, because I love our 3400 sq ft house and do not want to ever downsize. We have a large family room open to the kitchen, so no formal living room. But we do have a formal dining room that we use when we have guests over and for family celebrations (and to fold clothes, lol). Otherwise the five of us usually eat at the kitchen island. The kids’ rooms and playroom and 2 bathrooms are upstairs. As the older two have gone off to college, we have room upstairs for more guests and family to stay, including our parents. Eventually, we will not use the upstairs much, but we will just turn up the A/C upstairs and primarily use it when the kids return or for guest. Perhaps turn the playroom into a workout/movie room and turn one of the bedrooms into an art studio for my wife. We built the house 8 years ago, so our upkeep is not as bad as much older homes. The room that gets used the least is definitely the dining room, but it is a pass through room that creates a sense of space in the house that I would miss were it gone.
Our house is way too big for 2 people. We live in the kitchen/breakfast area/family room, the master bedroom and bath and H’s study. H likes to watch TV in the basement rec room (large TV) and I read and work out there.
The rest of the house is very underused. I would downsize yesterday, but we plan to retire/relocate in 3-5 years and H doesn’t want to move twice. We will definitely get a smaller place.
@vistajay , perfectly ok to love your space! This for me was just an exercise and examining where you spend your time and which rooms if any seem disposable. And I just found the heat map very telling and eye opening.
@conmama the semi circular couches sound very unique! Maybe because they are someone would pay a good $$ for them!
@vistajay , you are not alone. Our house is the same size as yours plus a 1200 so. Ft. Finished basement. I love the size of our house. It’s just 45 years old and I wish it was laid out a bit differently.
The first thing we did 25 years ago was finish the basement and I lived down there with all the kids toys, big screen TV. We loved it. Now, we use it more for just exercising. We have all sorts of equipment down there. I also go down there to watch movies when I Xmas wrap. The kids will use it when they are home and play pool and hang out if there are 3 or more of them.
@abasket , they are unique. We keep thinking we’d like to move within the next 5 to 7 years and we’d be mad if we could have used them and sold them. We tend to do nothing when were confused as what to do…and then another 2 years have come and gone.
Plumber comes today to flush radiator pipes and install new boiler. Heat? Only in summer, lol. Or not so funny. Big old home and we’ve endured this 20+ years. Next step is to improve insulation.
We often use the DR with the kids and SOs, cuz when they were little, someone said how important it is to actually dine with our kids. But casually, we use the kitchen. The DR and K arr right above the furnace, do heat enough. But the LR is very long, on the opposite side. When we aren’t using it, those rads are turned down so more heat goes upstairs. Or tries to.
This efficiency issue is real. Sime studies show whole house AC is going to cool a lot of unused space.
