Space and toys

Americans, they need a lot of space. For instance, in the US we live in 2400-square-foot house, on the large side for Arlington but not on the large side for other American communities. When we were house-hunting in 2007, it became apparent that most newer houses were of this size or larger. One reason seems to be the American necessity to have specific spaces for specific purposes: a living room for entertaining, a family room for the TV, a romper room for the kids to keep their toys in. Americans are also fans, obviously, of huge kitchens and bathrooms, separate dining spaces (usually 2 per household, for “entertaining” and “where your kids eat their meals and thus the floor is gross”).

So when we moved to Madrid last summer, we were wondering how we’d do as a “familia numerosa” (=three kids) in a standard 1000-square foot apartment. Now that it’s March, I feel like I can pretty much say that the answer is that we’ve barely noticed. The biggest ongoing issue has been the kitchen, which is really a bit too small for two parents to be cleaning up or making a meal at the same time. It’s definitely too small for two parents to be making a meal, one child to be writing a blog post, and drying laundry at the same time:

There's also a slight issue when we arrive home from school and all three children announce that they desperately need to go potty at the same time. 3 > 2(bathrooms), so this presents obvious logistical difficulties (as well as dickering about who spends too much time going pooh).

But other than that, we’ve adapted. For instance, it turns out that the kids don’t need big bedrooms. Either they don’t spend a lot of time there, or they spend their time sitting on their beds reading and playing. And other spaces we have are used for multiple purposes. For instance, the main room is used for entertaining, TV-watching, as a study by Heather during the day. It also holds the dining room table, which is used as a craft table, homework spot, and for all meals (note that in Arlington, we had 3 separate spaces for these tasks: a craft table, breakfast bar, and dining room table). And that was considered “downsizing” from a house in Michigan where we had an eat-in kitchen!

It turns out that the same principle is true for toys. In Arlington (and before that, in Michigan), we had rooms devoted to holding the kids’ toys. And we had a lot of toys. Two closets, three toy baskets, two bookcases, a crawl space stuffed with outdoor toys, and miscellaneous piles heaped about the house. Here we have two bookshelves + two bedside tables full—and yet the kids seem about as likely to report “I’m bored” here as when in Arlington. Part of it is that we’ve spent a lot of time outside. But another part is just that the kids seem quite content to play for long periods of time with the toys we do have – snap cubes, games, money from around the world, playdoh, and drawing have all been big favorites this year.

Other than occasionally longing to not near my kids snoring at night (our bedrooms abut one another), I think we could probably stay like this indefinitely. A smaller house is definitely easier to keep clean, and isn't all that much worse in terms of standard of living.

[Let’s see if Jon adds a comment on this one. Not sure he's as enamored of the situation.]