Yeah, that is the tricky part of the 1st house. While you may have spent your entire life living in one, it's different when you become the one that runs the household and is the parent instead of the kid. There are oftentimes a lot of things that you discover you prefer or dislike that you never even considered before.

With my wife and I, we luckily ended up doing a pretty good job of not screwing it up too much, but there were definitely a few "must haves" we looked for in the 2nd based on what we learned from the 1st.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Yeah, that is the tricky part of the 1st house. While you may have spent your entire life living in one, it's different when you become the one that runs the household and is the parent instead of the kid. There are oftentimes a lot of things that you discover you prefer or dislike that you never even considered before.

With my wife and I, we luckily ended up doing a pretty good job of not screwing it up too much, but there were definitely a few "must haves" we looked for in the 2nd based on what we learned from the 1st.

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Mind sharing what some of the must haves were? Anything you thought you needed when looking at your first home that you wound up not using that much?

Many of these things are simply personal preference vs. a right way or a wrong way, but one of ours was the laundry room location. Our first house just had a separate room for it in the hallway where the kids rooms were. At the time we bought, we considered it not ideal but not a big deal either, but we turned out to have a pretty strong preference to have it separated from all bedrooms.

12 years in our current home. 3 bedroom/2.5 bath/2500sq ft. We have 2 young kids.

The house works - but I would really like a guest bedroom and a dedicated study. Currently use an upstairs open gameroom that the kids never use as our office. However, we like it's location a lot (good neighborhood, convenient, nice greenbelt behind us)...not sure we're motivated enough to try and deal with the pain of moving.

My plan is to revisit in a couple years once the mortgage is paid off, the kids are bigger and more in the way, and when we might want to add a dog to the mix. Guess once it's paid off we can just be ready to pounce immediately when a bigger home opens up in our neighborhood.

Our first house was actually bigger (3 bed+study, 3 game/family rooms, and 2800sq ft) and we were DINKs at the time. It was new construction and we basically had like 3 rooms with absolutely nothing in them. Was lame at the time but the floorplan would have worked well today. But the location sucked so we didn't last there long.

We hate the open floor plan of our downstairs. It's literally one big room. You can't hide anything out of sight, everything becomes a dump spot, and when the kids play in the living room you hear it and see it everywhere. A dining room with a separate table that I can keep clean is now a must. That way the kids can do art projects, set up their toys, etc on a breakfast nook table and I don't have to spend an hour undoing it all just to eat dinner. (We can't have two tables in our current house, it's literally one long rectangle with the living room | dining area | kitchen.)

We have a second living area that basically an open loft on the second floor. It's open enough that it's very difficult to set up a baby gate that won't just topple over with a push. My 3 year old loves to hang off the banister (heart attack much???). So there is basically 500 sq ft that we can't use on a daily basis. Also I can't send my kids upstairs to play in their room without locking the door because of the said open loft area. They basically have to be supervised upstairs. So all the toys are pushed into the open downstairs. I want a playroom that can be closed with a door or French doors. I would also accept a Jack and Jill style playroom with the front open if it had two solid walls to attach a baby gate.

jopatura said:

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We hate the open floor plan of our downstairs. It's literally one big room. You can't hide anything out of sight, everything becomes a dump spot, and when the kids play in the living room you hear it and see it everywhere. A dining room with a separate table that I can keep clean is now a must. That way the kids can do art projects, set up their toys, etc on a breakfast nook table and I don't have to spend an hour undoing it all just to eat dinner. (We can't have two tables in our current house, it's literally one long rectangle with the living room | dining area | kitchen.)

We have a second living area that basically an open loft on the second floor. It's open enough that it's very difficult to set up a baby gate that won't just topple over with a push. My 3 year old loves to hang off the banister (heart attack much???). So there is basically 500 sq ft that we can't use on a daily basis. Also I can't send my kids upstairs to play in their room without locking the door because of the said open loft area. They basically have to be supervised upstairs. So all the toys are pushed into the open downstairs. I want a playroom that can be closed with a door or French doors. I would also accept a Jack and Jill style playroom with the front open if it had two solid walls to attach a baby gate.

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I've had a house with a playroom before and have lived in a small apartment with 2 young kids up the the NY area for the last 3 years (moving back to Texas in 6 weeks!). I have some bad news for you. Play room, no play room, big house, little house... not gonna matter... your kids' toys and **** are gonna be all around wherever you and your spouse congregate no matter what. Floorplan won't fix that problem.

ATM9000 said:

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jopatura said:

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We hate the open floor plan of our downstairs. It's literally one big room. You can't hide anything out of sight, everything becomes a dump spot, and when the kids play in the living room you hear it and see it everywhere. A dining room with a separate table that I can keep clean is now a must. That way the kids can do art projects, set up their toys, etc on a breakfast nook table and I don't have to spend an hour undoing it all just to eat dinner. (We can't have two tables in our current house, it's literally one long rectangle with the living room | dining area | kitchen.)

We have a second living area that basically an open loft on the second floor. It's open enough that it's very difficult to set up a baby gate that won't just topple over with a push. My 3 year old loves to hang off the banister (heart attack much???). So there is basically 500 sq ft that we can't use on a daily basis. Also I can't send my kids upstairs to play in their room without locking the door because of the said open loft area. They basically have to be supervised upstairs. So all the toys are pushed into the open downstairs. I want a playroom that can be closed with a door or French doors. I would also accept a Jack and Jill style playroom with the front open if it had two solid walls to attach a baby gate.

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I've had a house with a playroom before and have lived in a small apartment with 2 young kids up the the NY area for the last 3 years (moving back to Texas in 6 weeks!). I have some bad news for you. Play room, no play room, big house, little house... not gonna matter... your kids' toys and **** are gonna be all around wherever you and your spouse congregate no matter what. Floorplan won't fix that problem.

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The little stuff doesn't bother me but we've got their play kitchen, their trampoline, some red car for my 1 year old, and a big ikea bookshelf with boxes for the little stuff. Just getting that out of my line of sight daily would be such a relief.

jopatura said:

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ATM9000 said:

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jopatura said:

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We hate the open floor plan of our downstairs. It's literally one big room. You can't hide anything out of sight, everything becomes a dump spot, and when the kids play in the living room you hear it and see it everywhere. A dining room with a separate table that I can keep clean is now a must. That way the kids can do art projects, set up their toys, etc on a breakfast nook table and I don't have to spend an hour undoing it all just to eat dinner. (We can't have two tables in our current house, it's literally one long rectangle with the living room | dining area | kitchen.)

We have a second living area that basically an open loft on the second floor. It's open enough that it's very difficult to set up a baby gate that won't just topple over with a push. My 3 year old loves to hang off the banister (heart attack much???). So there is basically 500 sq ft that we can't use on a daily basis. Also I can't send my kids upstairs to play in their room without locking the door because of the said open loft area. They basically have to be supervised upstairs. So all the toys are pushed into the open downstairs. I want a playroom that can be closed with a door or French doors. I would also accept a Jack and Jill style playroom with the front open if it had two solid walls to attach a baby gate.

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I've had a house with a playroom before and have lived in a small apartment with 2 young kids up the the NY area for the last 3 years (moving back to Texas in 6 weeks!). I have some bad news for you. Play room, no play room, big house, little house... not gonna matter... your kids' toys and **** are gonna be all around wherever you and your spouse congregate no matter what. Floorplan won't fix that problem.

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The little stuff doesn't bother me but we've got their play kitchen, their trampoline, some red car for my 1 year old, and a big ikea bookshelf with boxes for the little stuff. Just getting that out of my line of sight daily would be such a relief.

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I know what you are saying and believe me, I get it because prior to living in a bigger house with a playroom I had a smaller house with kids stuff everywhere.

You are going to get a bigger house and get the big stuff out of the way and then be constantly pissed that you have a bigger house and a 'playroom for all of this *****' and you'll be annoyed that the balls, figurines, you care etc. still have to be stepped around or on and be fed up with the fact that all of your kids' stuff now infects your bigger house just like it did your smaller house.

one MEEN Ag said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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Yeah, that is the tricky part of the 1st house. While you may have spent your entire life living in one, it's different when you become the one that runs the household and is the parent instead of the kid. There are oftentimes a lot of things that you discover you prefer or dislike that you never even considered before.

With my wife and I, we luckily ended up doing a pretty good job of not screwing it up too much, but there were definitely a few "must haves" we looked for in the 2nd based on what we learned from the 1st.

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Mind sharing what some of the must haves were? Anything you thought you needed when looking at your first home that you wound up not using that much?

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I'm on house #3. It's the biggest one, at just under 2300 sq ft. The other two were right at 2000 sq ft. It's just myself and my son, so our needs are different from most families, but the one thing I wish I had in my current home is a 1/2 bath.

I had one in my second home, and when I was building, I initially thought it was a waste. But with a kid (specifically a teenaged boy), it is SO nice to have a 1/2 bath for guests that I don't have to worry about being clean every time someone comes over.

Current home also only has a shower in the secondary bath (there is a tub in the master). I wanted to do that in house #2, but my builder talked me out of it. If we still lived in that house, I would have regretted that decision. Again, having a teenaged boy, shower is the way to go. Much easier to keep clean.

Our 2nd house has the upstairs family that definitely reduced a fair amount of the toy clutter downstairs, but agree that it didn't eliminate it by any means. The cure for it was kids getting old enough to not play with toys anymore.

2009 - 2012 (First house)
2013 - 2018 (Second house)
2018 - Really long time from now

I may be in the minority here, but to me, smaller and less expensive is better. I just recently bought my second house (first was sold during a divorce) and it's 3/2 and just under 2000 sqft. It's just me and my two kids though, and my oldest is 16 and will be going off to college in a couple of years. I don't have a ton of stuff and don't want a ton of stuff. In fact I probably don't have enough stuff to fill this place out unless I start buying crap. It's more than enough room for the three of us. I'll probably be here at least until my youngest is out of high school (he's 8).

Of course, I also shared a two bedroom apartment with my kids for a couple of years where my son and I shared a bedroom. Probably not many on here would do that

I think the biggest thing to me is people use to make do with and get by on a lot less. You don't necessarily need guest rooms, offices, media rooms, game rooms, play rooms, etc, etc. People think they do, but when it comes down to it, you can get by on a lot less if you choose to. And in my experience, life is much better and less stressful that way.

Still in our first house. 36 years, and have no intention of ever moving.