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I grew up in a large home (a 6 bedroom 1820s-30s house, with a dumbwaiter), and we never used all of the rooms regularly. I was basically an only child, considering I was adopted right before my sister moved out of the house. My mother is big into sewing, so she has a couple of bedrooms dedicated to that stuff. The only reason its still in the family is because we like keeping our horses there in addition to the property size itself. When im in the market, I won't buy large. A thousand square feet or less is all I need for myself
Yesterday I visited a new friend in his home. He's single, lives by himself. Five bedrooms, 5.000 square feet. Very nice neighborhood and fantastic wooded lot right by the river. Nice features like a deck AND a screened-in porch. He earns a high salary and can easily afford the home. But what blew my mind was walking in---the first two rooms you see when you walk in, one on either side, were completely empty. Not one piece of furniture. It just looked so weird to me. Basically he lives in his bedroom, den, office, or kitchen. I can't imagine paying for air conditioning and heating all that extra unused space...
I'm single and I'm looking to buy a house under 2000 sf. I also pretty much live in my bedroom or kitchen. I may end up with empty rooms since I also don't have need for a traditional living room, great room or dining room. I don't plan on furnishing rooms that won't get used.
The traditional American Dream is NOT necessarily to buy a BIG house. It's just to buy a house, to be a homeowner, a property owner. (Remember, in the early days of the Republic, only property owners could vote.)
Nobody said anything about "big". After WWII, remember, some of the suburban houses people bought in droves were very small by today's standards, in tacky-tacky developments on Long Island (Levittown), and the like.
People were just happy to have a place to call home, that they were building equity in, and that had a yard for the kids. . That was the American dream.
The average size of American houses has gone up and down over the history of the country.
There is an assumption that the very small houses that were built by the thousands after WWII were somehow "the norm", and that everything since has grown out of control. But those small post-WWII houses were also a passing phase.
So many young couples had postponed starting families, and those tiny houses made it possible to resume normal life after a devastating war.
The houses prior to WWII were larger and so were the families. Without the war disrupting everything, average housing sizes would probably have been larger.
I'm single and I'm looking to buy a house under 2000 sf. I also pretty much live in my bedroom or kitchen. I may end up with empty rooms since I also don't have need for a traditional living room, great room or dining room. I don't plan on furnishing rooms that won't get used.
The great room was what my house designer convinced me on. It didn't take too much because first of all, I didn't know what I wanted and secondly, I inherited a lot of of screens from over seas that I could use to partition off the kitchen.....in theory. It hasn't been done yet because I am still unpacking.
The thing about the screen approach is that it has taken hold with various ones bought from "At Home". As said, when it came to building the house, I really didn't know what I wanted....or what I needed, so the windows were built without anything for curtains. The "At Home" screens have served as their substitute although as another has pointed out, with a surrounding forest, I don't need curtains.....in their view.
I still wonder about those who only live in a few rooms of where their link to the Net is, how it is done. Is it our devices, the Net and the TV (which is often the Net these days) which determine which rooms we live in.
I still wonder about those who only live in a few rooms of where their link to the Net is, how it is done. Is it our devices, the Net and the TV (which is often the Net these days) which determine which rooms we live in.
For me, it's practicality. I work 8 hours a day. With commute, I'm gone a solid block of 9-10 hours and the house is empty during that time. When I get home in the evening, I grab food in the kitchen and head to my bedroom to rest.
As a single, working person, what other rooms should I force myself to inhabit? Should I dirty up a living room or a dining room just because they exist?
I agree - people should live in the kind of home they want (and hopefully can afford) in the location they want to me.
However, I still believe there is a benefit to thinking things through about how you are going to live in a house and if it will fit that lifestyle. And of course that goes both ways - I think the people trying to squeeze in to a 300 sq foot tiny house are doing just as poor a job of truly envisioning their life in that environment.
I can stay that when I walked into the model home version of my current house, I *immediately* felt at home. I could envision my son and me living there, and things have turned out pretty much exactly the way I imagined on that very first day - except that we use the loft less than I envisioned. I thought that we'd end up going upstairs in the evenings after dinner and hanging out there. But it turns out our living room is so inviting and it also makes it easier for me to try to get everything dealt with for the next day when I'm downstairs - getting the kitchen cleaned up, lunches packed, checking on homework, getting some computer and/or tv time. I could compress all of that into less time and go upstairs, but it's been nice to do it in a more leisurely way. I don't know that I would have realized that ahead of time, and if I had done a diagram, I would have a lot of red dots in the loft, thinking it would be used on pretty much a daily basis, rather than a couple of times a week and sometimes not even that.
As I mentioned, my decision to include that space wouldn't have changed, because I think that extra ~250 sq ft will make a big difference when it comes to resale, and the different in price was tiny, I think about 7000. Obviously even if there was room to add on (there's not, we have TINY lots), you could never do it for that kind of price.
But doing the kind of thought exercise suggested by this concept could help others do a better job of right sizing their own space when they really think through their day and where in their house they spend their time.
I agree and see your point. We didn't do that with our first house. However, with this one, we got it just right. Even though it's a larger home, it's really all about the layout. It's a traditional floorplan with some open areas so it doesn't give the impression of being a gargantuan box. I've always remarked at how the home as an intimate feel, encouraging the family to come together yet at the same time offering spaces when people want to be apart. Even though there's only four of us and at any given time, only 3-4 rooms are being used, at some point every room is used. I freely admit that we don't use the parlor (aka formal living room) and the dining room often but they are nice to have when they are being used. For example, on the occasions when I do entertain, I like having that dedicated room for dining. There's a certain ambiance to a dining room, with its formal table and china cabinet. Because it doesn't get much use, it looks pristine all of the time and is a great view from the outside (we keep our shutters open). I like the parlor because it offers me a space to use when I have guests like contractors etc. The family room, with its sectional couch and relaxed atmosphere is truly for entertaining family and friends. The dog hangs out in there and his hair is all over the place but he's not allowed in the parlor and as a result, it too looks pristine all of the time and views nicely from outside.
A smaller house just wouldn't suit our needs. Sure, we could make it work, and logically we could make do with less space, but we love being close together and spread out. Same goes with yard, even though more yard means more work, it's nice to have even if I'm not out in it as much as I'd like...
My dining area is "formal" in the sense that I have a lovely cherrywood table, a gorgeous art deco buffet and an antique mirror that belonged to my grandmother.
But it's an open floor plan so it's open to the kitchen. And it's our only eating space, so it's used on a daily basis, often for many hours at a time.
Take that, dining room haters AND open floor plan haters!
In all seriousness, I'll just reiterate that the point of this thread was the concept of thinking through how you'll use your space to try to do as good a job as you can in terms if getting all the space you'll use and using all the space you get. Obviously, that's going to vary for everyone in terms of the actual specifics.
I would agree with the kitchen here being a central focus on our family's distribution of time inside a house (especially with younger kids). For us the porch/patio is also far heavily used compared to this picture. We live in a very friendly outdoor climate so our yard and patio are a great place to BBQ and socialize for 9 months of the year.
The laundry room is a place you don't want to spend your time. So the more efficient it's layout/utility means it will minimize your time there. It has an inverse relationship to other areas of the home.
The formal living and dining rooms are dead; however we have an "open concept" almost eat-in kitchen. We bounce between eating at the island counter and having meals at the dining room table.
A bathroom you take 1 or 2 showers per day but likely you are in 3-4 times to use the restroom. On work days you still take the showers but use public/employer restrooms.
This diagram also doesn't value the intrinsic value of storage, the value of a garage (especially 3 car), nor the bedroom allocation of time.
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