House Downsizing Featured

I like the couple that went from 7000 sq ft to 3400. I cannot imagine caring for and cleaning a 7000 sq ft house. Even 3400 for two people is much more than needed.

OTOH, even though it is just me now, I like having two bathrooms in my

Our largest house was 1700 square feet. We never used the living room or the dining room; the family room did duty for both of those functions. Our current house is 1200 square feet. No family room. We colonized the dining room with the fridge and some pantry shelving. It still has a small table; I've been eating lunch and dinner there since I got a nearly white chair in the living room. Breakfast is still in the home office in front of the computer.

I like having our illicit toilet in the basement, even though it can be a drag to haul down there to use it. It was a big bump in functionality over having just one toilet for the two of us.

Heh. I spent my first 9 years in a house with four adults and me. One toilet. We managed.

If you can afford that size house, you can afford a couple hundred to have a cleaning service come every other week to do a comprehensive cleaning. It's worth it just to save your time.

Maybe. A lot of people go for the impressive house and have nothing left. Up to their eyeballs in credit-card debt.

My cleaner is $90 for my 1200 sq ft house. My mother's cleaner is $90 for her 949 sq ft house. You might want to revise your estimate upward.

Mine is $150 per visit, every other week for about 2k sq ft which is less than 'a couple hundred every other week'. And that's in California.

I grew up with 7 kids and 2 adults with one bathroom and 3 bedrooms - finally added another bedroom ansd dining room just before the 2 of us oldest kids left home after #8 arrived

I've no idea how many square feet it was but when I was married we rented a house. Same deal. The upstairs was terra incognita. One room was theoretically my wife's 'sewing room' although her first and last encounter with a sewing machine did not end well. There were a couple of other rooms that were mostly unused. What I imagine was supposed to be a dining room was a pass-through on the way to the bathroom. I did feed the cats there so it maybe was a dining room. Mostly we lived in the living room and kitchen, including the convertible sofa.

The upstairs access was odd. There was a landing with three stairs up and down between the kitchen and living room, with the flight to the upstairs at a right angle. Her mother gave us a queen sized bed as a wedding present and after much fuming and farting the crew from Macy's said there was no way it was going to make it to the upstairs bedroom. We jury rigged two twin beds for a while but the convertible sofa was an upgrade.

Neither of us were big on House Beautiful.

True, now with my 1580 sq ft I have a cleaning lady twice a month. I put the laundry in before she gets here, but she folds it when dry.

Should have mentioned, mine is 125 for over four years now.

My service sends four ladies every other week. It takes them about an hour. Figuring they're probably twice as efficient as I would be doing the same chores, that's 8 hours of my labor saved. Definitely worth it.

I get sometimes one, other times two. occasionally three. They have all been here alone or together and amazingly co-ordinated with the tasks. it is more like an attack.

Total time is about 3.5 hours no matter the combo. When they leave, the kitchen looks like the day we moved in. Even if I'm not home, no short cuts.

I really do have the time to do it, but, they do it better. Agree, worth it.

$25 an hour - 2 hours ( so $50) every Friday for 1230 sq foot 2 story up from $20 an hour 3 years ago

Well, I'll admit that people don't need both a living room and a den/family room. But I'd never buy a house without a bathtub.

Are they going to wash their 2-year old in the shower? The kitchen sink? The back yard?

But mostly for myself. I'm still thinking about replacing my tub with what these days they call a soaker tub. When I lived in Brooklyn, in what was built as a luxury building in 1930, it had an external overflow. I don't know the name for it but instead of a drain near the top of the tub, there was a 16 or 18" tube sticking up from the floor outside the tub, with a smaller tube inside of it, with a white ceramic handle. To fill the tub, one lifted the inner tube a little bit, twisted a litle bit, and dropped it down until it plugged the drain path. To drain the tub, do the reverse and the inner tube doesn't fall down as far.

An inch or two below the top of the inner tube it had a big hole, which was the overflow. Much easier to stop up than overflows right in the bathtubs. Just a layer or two of electric tape, and the promise to myself that I would remember to remove the tape before I moved out.

This enabled the tub to fill an inch or two higher, etill without overflowing.

I could fill it high enough that I could float in the tub with only about 1 square inch of my tush sitting on the bottom. In my current tub I can't float at all.

The nice tub also had its water controls along the side wall so they were easy to reach without having to reacg as far as one's toes.

My friends said it's easier to have a big house. When one room gets dirty they just moved onto the next one.

Everybody is different. We ripped out our bathtub and put in a shower. Neither of us has willingly taken a tub bath since junior high.

We don't care about resale; we're going out feet first.

What a girl. Take a shower like a man.

Don't bother visiting me. No tub here or the last house after a remodel. No two year olds either.

When we were selling the last house, the realtor mention no tub could be an issue. The buyer pointed out the bathrooms were one of the deciding factors with the really nice showers.

I said, *I'd* never buy such a house. I have heard that some people are different and I have no proof that they're not.

I could still stay for a while. How long before you expected me to clean up?

That's nice.

Never did see the point of marinating in your own juices.