I’m watching TV right now and there’s a couple showing off their house - all 10,000 sq ft of it!!! Their closet is bigger than our master bedroom! Two people in such a huge place just boggles my mind. (They’re lottery winners who moved up from a 700 sq ft place to this one.)
Our house is about 1700 sq foot of living space over a 1700 sq ft basement that houses my husband’s wood shop, my ceramics studio, and our laundry room. We have 2 guest rooms which are pretty much storage rooms unless we have company. Our living room is mainly a pass-through between the family room and our bedroom. We’ve used the dining room maybe half a dozen times in the last 2 years.
Not counting the basement, we use less than half of our space. I can’t imagine having a den or a media room or an exercise room or even rooms much larger than we have already. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a smaller place as part of a family of 7. Still, I truly don’t know what else I’d want - maybe a sunroom so I could have more house plants.
Do you use most of your house? Would you make use of more rooms? Could you get by with less?
I live in a three-bedroom house, and absolutely all of the space is used. There is my bedroom, a guest bedroom that also serves to hold a lot of books and the non-machine parts of doing laundry (air drying, folding, hampers), and then my work room, which is choc-a-bloc with stuff. The living room has the TV area and also the dining table. That leaves just the kitchen, the bathroom, and the front hall.
I would really like to have a room with sofa and chairs but no television. I’d also really like to have a second bath, even if only a half one, and maybe a dining room.
There are only two of us here, well two and a half if you count the ~3 days a week my boyfriend is likely to stay over. We have something like 1600 sq.ft. if I recall right, and we generally make good use of it.
There’s no real dining room, just a table nook off the kitchen and across from the laundry closet, so it’s used for eating, homework and folding daily.
3 bedrooms, one of which is officially a spare that’s referred to as Grandma and Grandpa’s room due to their frequent visitation, but the boyfriend and I prefer it over my real bedroom for privacy. So even the spare gets used regularly.
Both bathrooms are used daily, and without a family room or den the living room is constantly in use, too.
Once in a while I long for a basement that could be haphazardly finished in order to have a place for the munchkins to romp when entertaining, or a large family room for the same reason, I could host more if I had that available. Otherwise, I feel like I have quite enough to keep after already and wouldn’t want any more house.
I’m using too much of this place, but it’s because I’m hoping to move out very soon and I’ve been collecting things for when that happens. It’s Mom’s fault! She keeps buying me coffee tables at yard sales and then complaining about how there’s no room in the house because of all the coffee tables!
We have a 3 bedroom apartment, and it’s full. Packed. Rubbermaid strage containers under every bed, every shelf and drawer pretty much at capacity, and closets with waist-high piles of stuff on the floor. But part of that is because Mom refuses to throw out anything that might be useful for me when I move out, so we have far too many dishes, towels, blankets, and spatulas. Heck, even our storage closet downstairs is full, and I think we have some boxes of books stored away at my aunt’s.
Yes, I know she’s trying to get rid of me. I’m working on it.
We have about 1000 sq. ft and we use about 800 sq. ft. We have a cellar and stables that we never use, and an upstairs that is strictly storage (though it was my son’s room back in the day. I’d use that upstairs space, but the stairway is too steep and it’s a giant pain in the ass.
I don’t require a lot of space, but I could sure use those 200 sq ft if they were more accessible.
I’m not using any of it at the moment. I will next week though.
I use the smallest bedroom for storing my film equipment. The largest bedroom is where I sleep there. The middle-sized bedroom is empty. (Actually, a friend is staying there. He may have moved a bed into it.)
I use (i.e., spend time in) the back half of the living room, my bedroom, the bathroom, the laundry room, and the kitchen.
Apartment liver with 1 bedroom, and about 750 sq. feet. I use all my rooms–though I don’t usually actually eat in the eat-in kitchen, and do sometimes think that both my bedroom and my living room are awfully big for one person and the amount of stuff which I have. But, I’m not sure I’d be eager to live in significantly more cramped space.
Ours is about 1450 sq. ft., and we use it all. Of course, most of one bedroom and the entire garage are used just for storing stuff, so we don’t really “use” that space, but we certainly occupy it.
I’m embarassed to admit the two of us use all of a four-bedroom house. We sleep in one bedroom. One is Mr. SCL’s office. One is my dressing room. The last one is my craft room, and storage. The den actually sees more use than the living room, because that’s where Mr. SCL watches TV. I usually eat in the dining room because I read while I eat, while Mr. SCL watches TV while he eats. Then there’s the cat suite, which is a former 2-car garage that contains 8 cats and my office - the former tool room.
Mr. SCL and I are both packrats. People should be genetically tested before they marry to determine if they are packrats. Two packrats should not be allowed to marry. We both inherited the packrat gene. Fortunately, we don’t have kids so we won’t be passing it on.
One bedroom apartment, and we use all of it. Really. I wish we had a second bedroom for a guest bedroom/workroom to dump all my sewing/jewellery/beading/assorted hobby junk in. And a large, non-galley kitchen. Maybe in a year or so- we can’t afford a higher rent right now.
I can’t even imagine the luxury of three bedrooms. Of course, we don’t have kids yet. They’d make a three-bedroom a whole lot less echoey.
We have three bedrooms, 1950 sq. feet, and use all of it. We don’t have a basement. It is my constant endeavor to be happy with what I have and not to wish for just one more room, or a basement–but I would use that space too, if I had it. I don’t want a house where I don’t use any space–I’d still have to clean it.
Mine’s approximately 3400 Sq/ft and no, I don’t use all of it. Two of the four bedrooms are guest rooms for visits by family and assorted acquaintences, so those are empty about 80% of the time. I had the third bedroom professionally converted into a gym with an eliptical trainer, treadmill, Soloflex set up for weight training, a wall-length, floor to ceiling mirror, and acoustic, low-impact black rubber tiles. I use the gym about 4 days a week, so it is used. I have a home office that I use every night, a living room that I never use, a dining room I only use when I have dinner guests, a kitchen I probably use twice a week, a breakfast room where I eat my daily meals, a downstairs powder room that’s only used for guests, an upstairs guest bathroom that’s only used by overnight guests, a master suite, including master bath, where I spend most of my time when I’m home, and a great room (or family room) that I use as a media room.
Three bedroom house, where I live alone (well, with an elderly cat).
Downstairs: living room, which is where the TV is – but I can also see the TV from the dining room, which is where my computer is. Kitchen. Mudroom, which is where the washer and dryer are.
Upstairs: my bedroom and the only bathroom. The other two bedrooms are mostly book storage, though the back bedroom has a bed for guests that is used periodically (plus the closet there I keep out-of-season clothes). Basement is furnace, hot-water-heater, and miscellaneous junk.
I have a 3-story, 4-bedroom town house, no basement. There is just me and 2 cats.
The two bedrooms on the top floor are a guest room and the cats’ room/storage; the one only gets opened up when I have someone staying and, while the cats use their room all the time, I only go up once or twice a day to see about the litter boxes. The top-floor bathroom is used only then too, unless there’s a guest. Since I don’t use them often, I usuallly don’t heat these rooms or have the AC on up there, depending on the time of year.
On the second floor, I use the smaller bedroom (the one I’m in now) as a computer/TV room/study and the larger as my bedroom. This is where I do most of my living at home.
Downstairs are the kitchen and an L-shaped living/dining area. Unless I have visitors, I don’t normally sit in the living room, and the dining-room table is where the non-important mail piles up until I sort and throw it out.
All of it. I live in a one and half bedroom apartment, about 1000 sq. feet. Bedroom, small bedroom which is the office, living room, kitchen, small dining nook, and balcony.
The balcony overlooks a parking lot, so I don’t use it often. It is mainly a place for smokers who visit here, my satellite antenna, and a storage closet.
The second bedroom is tiny, but it works well as an office for the computer. My partner works at home most days, so he spends a lot of time in here.
So, almost every inch of this apt. gets used on a daily basis.
One thing I didn’t mention, but it’s a biggie to me - we have an attached 2 car garage that we’re actually able to use as a garage, since we have the basement plus 2 small sheds for storage. We’ve had garages at all but one of our houses and this is the first one where we’ve been able to use it for parking our cars. In fact, it’s an oversized garage, so besides the cars, we have a refrigerator, a couple of shelf units, and some furniture we’re trying to decide what to do with. If this house hadn’t come with a garage, I’m pretty sure I’d have pushed to build one. I love being able to get in and out of my van without worrying about the weather.
I’m working on it.