As we’re home today w the kids for the holiday…

@rogger I had dinner at a friend’s nyc apartment recently with her 2 elementary school kids. I too have kids that age but their home was so quiet because there was no screentime or music. It was heavenly. Then I returned home to the cacophony.
 
@rogger A short term solution might be loop ear plugs. They have some that can take the edge off while still allowing you to hear what’s going on. My friend with two toddlers strongly recommends some and even gifted me a pair yesterday!
 
@rogger I feel this. We bought our house 4 years ago right as Covid was starting and got a great price and an even better interest rate. At the time we both worked out of the house and had one baby. Now my husband works from home, we have a toddler, and another baby. I may also be working from home soon too. The house is getting too small, we had to get rid of the dinning room table to make an office. We really need something else but we’re in a HCOL area and at this point we couldn’t even afford to buy a house in similar size to ours, let alone something bigger, then you interest on top of that. We also arnt in a place to move somewhere cheaper right now so we’re just stuck in this house trying to make the best of it.
 
@rogger I got a loud air purifier on purpose. I have it set up in my bedroom right by the door. When I need quiet time, I go in my room and turn it on full blast. It drowns out the rest of the house. I also got noise canceling headphones. I put the filters on subscribe and save through Amazon. Everytime I get one in the mail, I k iw it's time to change the filter.
 
@rogger Think of all the stress it was to buy your house, then double it because you have to also sell your current house when you buy a new one. We also settled for a not-perfect house because our rent was ridiculous. I feel the high rents drive people to be desperate and buy something that is either too expensive, too small, or falling apart. When I think about having to sell our house in addition to buying a new one, I’m not sure if the stress is worth it to move.
 
@rogger I relate to this SO MUCH. I absolutely wish we would have bought a larger "starter" home because, surprise! It's our forever home now. I thought we would start our family here, but then size up...

We're in an average cost-of-living small city but there is a massive housing shortage. Sizing up would require us to move 45 minutes outside of the city, at least. Our location is prime (walking distance to grocery store, library on the next block, ample parks, 15 minute commute...) and I refuse to give it up.

I go back and forth between grounding myself in reality -- most families around the world do NOT have 1000+ square feet -- and feeling totally suffocated by our very small (sub-800sq foot) home. Not to mention I'm pretty sure our kid will be very tall as a teenager. I can't even think about that yet.

Related: this is why Millenials don't host. I'd love to host a holiday get-together or friends for the weekend. But...guest bedroom? Guest BATHROOM? A large enough dining table for a crowd? I wish...
 
@nekkam Oh my gosh yes. I have multiple personality disorder when I talk about this. My kids are teen/tween (basically adult size now) so 4 adult size people in this house feels sooooo tight. But I’m like ok I have a small but nice house and I should be grateful. Then the next minute the kids are home from school and I’m like I AM SUFFOCATINGGGG. I then google houses that are 30 min away and dream about the space but then I won’t move that far away bc my commute would be a nightmare and it’s not as convenient 🫠 I’m also at sub-3% interest rate. I should’ve just held out a bit longer on my search for the 4 bedroom, is all I’m saying. Too late now. I just wanted to whine about it.
 
@rogger I have a family of 4 in a 1280sqft 3bd/2ba closed concept house. I feel like we’re always right on top of each other in the living room, so I send the kids to their rooms or to go play outside.

My partner and I spend A LOT of time and money on making the yard an extension of the house. We built a courtyard with pavers in the front yard, had 12’x30’ concrete slab in the back, a playground. We’ve planted 7 trees, 2 of them just this weekend.

It helps to just get everyone out of my face for a while. “Go outside or go read in your room.”
 
@rogger I’m sorry.. we have a 4 bedroom house and the kids still constantly play in the same room we’re in all the time and they’re always loud. They have a dedicated play room too. The good thing is we can barely hear them when they’re upstairs in their rooms playing but they always want to be right next to us.
 
@rogger Ugh I’m sorry! The housing market is ridiculous. I had to work from home during the pandemic with two screaming babies/toddlers and definitely second ear plugs and a box fan (or two box fans). Even without ear plugs, the box fans drown out SO much and make everything much more tolerable tbh. Even now if I’m feeling overwhelmed and can’t just go hole away like I would when working, I ask my husband to take over for 10 mins and I lock myself in our room with the box fan, turn the lights off, and just breathe for 10 minutes. It makes a difference!
 
@rogger My mom enrolled us into different afterschool programs, for years we rarely ran into each other, except for the weekends of course. And that helped with the noise during weekdays and on Saturday and Sunday we weren’t bothered by the noise since we were happy to be together after days of barely seeing each other
 
@rogger And that is why we are moving to flyover country. Kids are still sharing at 7 (boy) & 9 (girl) here and need more privacy. Plus we both WFH and I’m stuck in our bedroom.

But we made bank selling this 3/2 and built a new house that’s a 5/3 plus we’ll finish the basement in a year.
 
@rogger Where tf do all of you live that a 4 bed house is over a million dollars? You can get a 4 bed in a decent area where I live for under $400k.
 
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