…it was with my family… mom, dad and my sister and brother. Almost 40 years later I moved back into “the ancestral estate” and I feel like the place is overstuffed with just my crap. I can’t imagine having five people living here!
Mundane and pointless, I know, but it really struck me when I was at my other place today and realized how much stuff I need to get rid of or drag here.
My mom grew up in a house about 1/4 the size of this place and she had 5 siblings plus her parents. :eek:
I am the oldest of 5 kids. All 7 of us lived in a 1000 sq ft row house with one bathroom. It’s not a big deal when you don’t know any better.
Now two of us (plus 3 critters) have 1600+ sq ft, and sometimes it feels small. All relative, right?
I don’t recall the sq, ft. of this place but it’s a one story, three bedroom ranch with a really big kitchen. One and a half baths.
To many people in this world it would probably seem like a mansion, to others, a shack.
Rule of life: crap expands to fill the space available. 
When I moved into the place I had before this one, that was after I’d been living in single room lodgings for a few years. I think that took about three car loads. When I moved to my current house four years later, it was more like three van loads plus about two car loads. To move out of here now, I think I’d have to properly consider hiring a removals company.
The funny thing is, at no point have I considered that I have too much, or not enough stuff.
I live in my childhood home, too. My husband and I are trying to clear our stuff out of the way to make room for a kid or two. I don’t know how we ever fit in here with six people.
I’m another who moved back to my childhood home (my partner bought the house next door). I previously lived in a 1-bedroom NYC apartment, but my belongings now fill this 3-bedroom house. Of course, some of the things belonged to my parents (the dining room and breakfast room furniture), but the entire basement is filled with stuff of my parents that’s too good to throw out. It’s funny to think that when I lived here as a teen, all my earthly belongings fit into one non-crowded room. When I first moved to NYC, everything fit into a small suitcase.
I’ll definitely die in this house. It’ll be much easier than ever moving again.
My mother’s family (3 adults and 8 kids) lived in an apartment above their bakery. How did they survive with only one bathroom?
For those of you who moved back into your childhood home, what changes (i.e., remodeling or repurposing rooms) have you made in it? What are you leaving the same?
I moved back into my childhood home for a time when I was in my late 20s. The main change I made was in redesignating the rooms. It was more practical to close off the upstairs, and I think it would have felt like some sort of failure of adulthood to return to my old bedroom up there anyway. I ended up using what had been the dining room as my bedroom. What had been my mom’s bedroom became a craft room, the sewing room (really just a converted porch) became a library of sorts, or at least it had book cases, and the nook under the stairs which formerly held books became a repository for cat stuff.
What didn’t change was the wall paper. Every room of that house had great old style wall paper. At the time I didn’t have a lot of financial resources, plus I knew the living situation was temporary, but even if it had been feasible, I would have kept it until it was peeling off the walls.
Only been here 8 months and I love it.
The hardest part is getting used to having use of a whole house, and the house is a bit bigger than I need. Where I was living before I could sit on my bed and almost everything was within reach. Now I have room to spread out.
I barely use half of the storage space. Partly because I’m short and can’t reach it, partly because I don’t need it anyway.
The hanging rod in my old closet was 20 inches, my new closet has got to be 4 feet. My little bit of clothes look silly hanging in there.
I know junk accumulates to fill available space but I am determined that will not happen here. My son and I are minimalist kind people so it shouldn’t be hard.
My house occupies the same spot that the house I was most likely conceived in stood. This successor structure (built in 1985) contains much of the accumulated ‘stuff’ going back to my great-grandparents’ time. It’s a spacious place but just loaded with belongings and memories.
The previous house was not torn down, though. I still own it. It was picked up and moved a quarter mile away, to another site on the family property, where it’s rented out. That structure is chock-full of memories, and its garage contains a lot of old family relics too.
We are not hoarders, but it’s been over 125 years since my family took possession of this property, and that’s a lot of years of knick-knacks etc. to cope with.
When my mom was here she had the landscaping kept up, lots of mulch around trees and bushes, stuff like that. I am in the process of making the lawn easier to maintain, i.e, more mowing-less weeding and taking out some things that are a pain to mow around.
I swore the first thing I was going to change was the wallpaper in the kitchen. It’s plaid! So far I haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve had possesion for about a year and been living here full time since Labor Day weekend.
Master bedroom…now my bedroom.
My old bedroom…now an office/entertainment/music room/library.
3rd bedroom…now storage.
Zillow is great at reminding you why you left that place/should have never gone there.
I was the oldest kid of a family of five (until my grandfather died and my grandmother moved in with us) in a row house of approximately 900 sq. ft. (I just found it on google maps and estimate it as 15m x 6 m) with one bathroom. We found it adequate. We raised three kids in my current house which is 1300 sq. ft. with two bathrooms (plus a half bath in the basement) and that was adequate. Now the nest is empty and the rooms are full of stuff. Which we are slowly trying to reduce. Part of it is what we have inherited. Including full sets of china from my mother-in-law, my step-mother-in-law and my step-mother-in-law’s two sisters all three of whom died without children and the other two died before she did. Stuff expands to fill the available space.