I loved reading these comments! It is fun to hear other people’s stories about growing up. My husband and I just built our first house a little over a year ago. We are 27 and 28 (no kids yet) and plan for this to be our house for at least the next 10-15 years. Ideally we would love for it to be our forever home if possible. Our lender wanted to approve us for a $300,000 loan (at 26 years old, yeah right) which around here would buy a VERY nice house. We opted instead for a 1240 sqft house at $167,000. We wanted a small loan with plenty of money to travel, buy a pool, travel trialer, nice vehicles, and do anything else we choose over the next decade plus. I’m also considering being a stay at home mom when we have kids one day so we wanted a small enough loan we could easily afford on one income. We built our house on a nice corner lot with a large, fenced in backyard. We have the backyard planned out to include a large above ground pool (to be installed this summer), a fire pit (also to be installed this summer), a shed to house pool and yard equipment, planter boxes for a garden, and plenty of room for a future swingset and room to run. We also have a large driveway with a basketball goal. We plan to have 2-4 kids that will be raised in this house AT LEAST into their early teens. (Would prefer longer). When we built the house we did so planning to utilize the outside as much as possible. We love being outdoors and plan to raise our children to love them too. I would much rather spend my days outside than sitting in a large house, this was true for my husband and I as children and as adults, so spending money on tons of indoor space was not appealing. Utlizing the outdoors (backyard tent camping as a slumber party, roasting marshmellows around the campfire, swimming all summer) is, in my opinion, an amazing childhood compared to sitting in your room. We were picky about where our lot was, we choose a housing addition that is close to the elemnetary school and middle school and park (about 5-10 minutes on bike), one minute drive from the major highway, and about an 8 minute drive into the big subburd. The housing addition has a country feel around it, but is close to everything which is something that was important to us. I could walk the kids to school on nice days with a country vibe around me and still be to the bowling alley or skating rink for birthday parties in less than 10 minutes. We wanted a big backyard but didn’t want to pay for acreage or land, so a large corner lot made the most sense. We have room for the things we want but do not have to pay a premium price. The house is 3 bedrooms and 2 baths with a large living room and good sized kitchen for the size. The table in our dining room fits 6 and we could probably upsize to one that fits 8 if we wanted to, but it would be tight. We have an attached 2 car garage with a 3 foot bumpout for extra storage. Right now we leave one car in the driveway and only park our Jeep in the garage so we have room for our ping pong table which gives us another hangout place when we entertain. We have easily entertained 6 other adults (8 people total) in our living room so I am confident 2 to 4 kids will fit nicely in there with room to spare. If we have 3 children then two of them will have to share a bedroom and all of them will share rooms if we have four (2 per room). However, the rooms are a good size for bunkbeds or 2 loft beds with desks underneath which is what I plan on doing. I also plan to one day turn our patio into a sunroom with a TV, video games and table for board games as an extra place for the kids and their friends to hang out. I firmly believe people live in way too big of houses today. I spent half of my childhood in a 1200 sqft house and half in a 2400 sqft house. I loved both houses, but the 1200 sqft house always felt more like home. The 2400 always felt empty and when I lived in it I envied friends who had smaller ”homier” houses. With proper planning, I think people can easily raise 1-4 children in a 1200 square foot house. If you have more children than that I think you should upgrade to a 4 bedroom house which would probably mean more around 1500-1600 sqft. I think the problem is a lot of people do not have the foresight to plan ahead. People like the OP buy 1200 sqft houses with plans to raise and homeschool over half a dozen children there. If you know you’re someone who wants to have lots of children then plan accordingly. I know sometimes life happens, but most cases of too-small-houses seem like they could have been avoided with better planning. I know our house will fit our needs at least until our oldest children are early teens. If, at that point, we feel too cramped we will move and rent out our house which will give us a nice source of income each month. If (hopefully) we do not feel too cramped we will stay and this will be our forever home that will be paid off by the time we’re 56! Woohoo! Either way it’s a win and our kids will spend, at a minimum, their elementary years in a fun house with a fun backyard and we will have plenty of expendable income for sports, trips, and anything else we desire! Small houses are the best in my opinion. They just require future planning which is something I do not think alot of people do these days! They either buy too small for the number of kids they want (OP) or they buy the largest house they can afford and then are unhappy becuse they have such little expendable income. Big houses don’t just mean higher mortgages, they mean buying more junk to fill them with, higher utilities, higher taxes, more expensive repair and upkeep costs… this all eats into expendable income quickly. I say GO SMALL whenever possible!! But, the right size of small for your family. 1200 sqft for 3 kids? Great! 1200 sqft for 7 kids… not so great.

Hi loladoon, Thanks for posting again, and I'm sorry to hear about your stress and depression over this. Perhaps you and your child need a vacation away from your partner and his son. Spending several days or a week in a different environment might give you a fresh perspective. As a father myself, it's hard for me to understand why your partner does not expect more from his son. The father has to deal more effectively with him and get the young man out on his own. A few good first steps would be for the dad to get rid of the video games and enforce reasonable hours for going to bed and getting up in the morning. If he's not willing to do that soon, it's doubtful that he'll ever be able to effectively deal with this situation. The son needs to go into therapy as well, but he won't unless his dad makes him go. You've already been discussing this for two years and nothing has changed. You can't be the fix it person here. The dad and the son have to do that themselves. At a minimum, I would cool things off for a while and see if anything changes. Meanwhile, you might get active with your friends again and start meeting new people.

Finally read Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. Wow. What a read. It's written mostly in AfAm dialect from the south and once I got the hang of that, it was eaz-readin'. It's a bildungsroman novel (or is that repetitive?) of a young AfAm woman who struggles to find out who she is, so it sounds rather "same old story" but the writing is stupendous. If you like to read lyrical descriptions that are heavy with Southern folklore (but not enough to make it confusing), you'll like this. Don't be put off by the dialect. You get the hang of it (or at least I did). Neale Hurston's own biography is a fascinating story in its own right as well. She won a couple of Guggenheims for research, she went to university as an Af Am in 1917 or so (when few women let alone women of color did), and had a successful writing career. And then - she ends up in Florida working as a maid, her writing forgotten for years, has a stroke, ends up in an indigent hospital and dies in an unmarked grave. Alice Walker et al brought her writing to the fore in the 1970's and now she is part of the canon of the Harlem Renaissance (although not everyone might agree with that categorization). Fascinating...

Everything you write evokes memories. In Sweden the saying to ward off evil is "pepper, pepper, touch wood" so I don't thing the touch wood bit could be Celtic in origin. When I was in India in 67-68, at international work camps, tiffin was the afternoon tea break with some savoury snack. But I think I heard the expression only in Delhi, not in other parts of India. In my childhood home (long ago now!) all meals were served at table in the kitchen and meal times were very strict and all families in the neighbourhood kept the same times. It was very convenient for children, all went in to eat at the same time so there were never any arguments. I lived on the Baltic coast so we had fish at least five times a week when in season, for lunch or dinner. We bought the fish from a fisherman who came round early in the morning, first on his bike with the icebox at the back, later with his car. There was only one main course and dessert, a cooked dessert every day. My mother would sometimes make small amounts of icecream, a rare treat. She made everything from scratch. I don't remember any store bought food or canned food. The first frozen foods in the late 50'ies were peas, spinach and fish filets. My mother never liked to cook although she had to. I started cooking when I was 14, the few things mother would let me cook. The very first thing I did was to cure a large fresh ham when mother was in hospital before Christmas that year. We usually got a cured ham for Christmas but that year father had bought a fresh ham from a farmer and took for granted that I would know how to make the brine.