Lawn = high water bill and more maintenance (mowing, etc.) if you want it to look green and nicely trimmed.
In places where water is scarce, it is now socially acceptable (or preferred) to have a brown lawn during the dry season.
I’m in the Bay Area and I can’ t think of one person I know who still has a lawn. The front and back of the new place is all brick. No lawn which is good in our water starved state.
Loving all the suggestions. I hope they keep coming!
I don’t think lack of rain is @BunsenBurner 's situation!
We’re in San Diego, very little rain of course. Front of house has a regular lawn; back yard a small area behind the pool. We have a lawn because my husband wanted a house with grass, possibly so he could mow it? No more leaf raking or snow blowing after all…
Lawn is a PITA and environmental burden (needs fertilizer, even if no pest control is done). Sprinkler systems are a PITA and a big expense (separate metering charges, backflow checks, and maintenance) and are not compatible with vegetable/flower gardens (need drip irrigation for that!).
In our previous house, we had walkways and mixed beds in the front and were slowly chipping away at the lawn in the back. Here, we have zero lawn, just natural woods, vegetable garden, and some minimal maintenance landscaping around the house.
@Marilyn - believe it or not, we actually have to water the lawns! 
Our July - September can have very dry spells, and water bills can be quite substantial. Our water comes from the snowpack in the mountains, so if the snowpack is low, some localities implement water saving measures.
Lawns can be a pain, waste of water. But aren’t there also concerns with cities having too much hardscape / pavement and brick? (I’m basing this question on very old info from a movie in high school german class… for a few years it had me considering career as climatologist).
That’s why you plant evergreens and conifers - at least in my neck of the woods.
I’m in SoCal too, and we are about to redo our back patio. The current one was built with slats, which lets stripes of sun through. For us, this has NOT worked because the sun is too intense during the day when the sun is overhead. I suppose I could try to grow grapes or wisteria or something to block the sun, but we are redoing it so that the roof is solid. And with a solid roof, we will be able to add heaters to the ceiling.
We don’t yet have a propane firepit, but will be adding one. They are SO nice in the cooler evenings.
Drawers for bottom kitchen cupboards - yes! I have these and they are so convenient. I even have my antique dishes in one, with a pegboard with dividers to keep them from bumping into each other during earthquakes. Much safer than in cupboards that could open and dump the contents.
I say this ad nauseum, but our single best kitchen improvement was switching to a deep, single kitchen sink rather than a double one. We use Blanco Silgranit.
Where I live, the amount of impervious surface we are allowed is very limited because we are in a critical zone, which is highly regulated in water communities. Since we have a dog, we also need a yard of some kind. We have been slowly transitioning some of our grassy lawn to more landscaped beds and vegetable gardens. We don’t have city water so don’t have to worry about a water bill or mandated water restrictions but this past summer dh installed a water barrel to use for watering the garden. We used to water our front lawn but as we got more environmentally concerned/educated, we just let it go if we don’t get enough rain to keep it green. More and more people in our neighborhood have moved in this direction so you rarely see sprinkler systems being installed. I can’t even think of anyone who even has one in the homes around me.
I would love to get rid of my backyard grass but my dog would revolt. ; )
We have a number of neighbors who have ripped up their lawn to create pollinator gardens. IMO, when done well, they look beautiful. Still require water though.
We did something in our current home we would have sworn we would never do:
We put in artificial grass. We have a very small back yard, and our two dogs just ruined the grass. We could not get it to grow-it was largely dirt, which turned into mud whenever it rained. And of course the mud would get tracked in no matter how hard I worked to clean off dirty paws before letting them back in. It was a constant battle.
We admitted defeat and put in the turf, but also put in very lush landscaping around the perimeter, so it still looks quite pretty. A lot of our neighbors have done the same in their back yards.
We also put in artificial turf in the back yard, including a putting green. I tried and tried to get grass to grow, but couldn’t due to shade from a beautiful grandfather oak. The turf is fabulous and I may decide to extend it around more of the house. We still have a lot of landscaping around the perimeter of the property so it all looks very pretty.
Our city has very strict rules about what percentage of the property can be impervious because water runoff is an issue here. Water drains through the turf beautifully. And it was great when we had a dog. I loved that she never came back in the house with dirty paws even after a big rain.
We bought a house that is grandfathered on the bank of a river and are in the midst of a three-phase renovation working with a very highly regarded architect. We loved the lot (1.8 acres on the river surrounded by conservation and agricultural land) but knew that we would be subject to environmental regulations and have thus been very careful in what we have tried to do. The house is much larger than we needed, but there are probably few locations like this in a major metropolitan area, so we will have a wing that a family could live in. In addition to the river, the house has a saltwater pool.
The first phase was to make a few modifications to an in-law suite that we made into the master BR. Wood floors replaced grotty carpet and major closet expansion, but the thing that I would highly recommend in a remodel is a Toto toilet. It is a luxury that feels good every day.
In phase 2, we are adding Tesla solar panels, batteries, and a natural gas generator. The downside of living in the forest surrounded by conservation/agricultural land is that we have power outages – we’ve had three since March. Neighbors on the street all have and highly recommend a gas generator that it automatically activated. If you are in a beach community, solar panels and batteries might be a great things.
In the third phase, we are doing a redesign of the main floor but will cut into the second floor and have a 2+ story glass window in our living room overlooking the river. The house already has radiant heat in the ground floor, which is lovely. So far, the things that I think we are considering that might be relevant to the OP: an outdoor shower, connecting the gas from the house to our barbecue, Nest thermostats, smart light switches, ethernet cable through parts of the house (I currently have a Google mesh network that is pretty good but have ethernet to my home office that provides me with over 900 Mbps download), a kitchen redesign that has an area for our regularly used appliances (espresso machine, milk frother, toaster oven) to be out and usable, a second sink (for food prep), a Kohler Cater Accessorized Kitchen Sink that my wife thinks is wonderful.
@shawbridge, your new place sounds like it’ll be a wonderful place for you and your family. Thanks for the suggestions at the end of your post. I was in Costco last week and took a picture of a Koehler accessorized sink that looked pretty amazing. Way too early to buy one but not too early to identify things we like. Glad to hear your wife likes it. Was happy to see that the price seemed quite reasonable too.
We our encouraged to have more pervious surface too. If I pave more than 200 square feet I am required to plant a tree or contribute to the town’s tree fund. I ripped out the grass in my (not very big) front yard and replaced it with a mix of perennials (many natives) and shrubs and some ground cover. The back yard has a little rain garden, minimal grass, grass pavers instead of a paved driveway, lots of native plants. We put in sprinklers and I love them. I don’t drown my yard in water, but it beats running around with the hose when we get a dry spell.
@collage1, a friend showed us the sink because she saw it only after her dream remodel and wished she had known about it. I found it at Costco online and asked the architect if I should buy it. She said it would normally be well over $1000 if we bought it when we needed it so I just bought it for something like $319 or $309 and put it in storage. A drop in the bucket, but every little bit helps. I didn’t mention that in Stage 2, we are also converting a huge garage into a painting studio. It is framed and lots of the electrical and plumbing work is done. We took the extra toilet replaced by the Toto toilet and it is going in the studio. Another small savings.
I’d definitely also recommend the Toto toilet. ShawWife will walk the entire length of the house to use it passing two bathrooms in between. I’m wavering at the moment. We are creating an office suite for me – part of the old MBR and another BR which with a BA in between. I’m tempted to put a Toto toilet in there as well. Relatively inexpensive luxury.
Oh and the duck in my avatar is an actual Muscovy duck who lives on the river but believes he lives with us. There are 5 Muscovies, two Pekin ducks and two Mallards, I think. All come visit us every morning and afternoon hoping to be fed. They have trained us well.
Do you mean one with a built-in bidet?
Do you have enough stretches of cloudy days that battery backup would not be sufficient to last through a power outage, so that a backup to the battery backup is needed?
@shawbridge, since we haven’t even closed escrow yet, I don’t think I can buy the sink quite yet but you have me thinking…and is there a particular toto toilet you and your wife thinks is superior? We have toto in our current home and are happy with them. Just wondering if there’s something new or unique about yours.
I have two great Toto toilets (just dual flush no bidet) and one lemon. I wish I’d gotten the bidet for the master bathroom.