It's time to rethink the single-family home as the American dream, author says

[llmart]

59. I grew up in one that I even doubt was 900 sq. ft.

There were my parents and us seven children. I'm fairly certain it wasn't even 900 sq. ft. My parents didn't even own it. They were always renters. How we ever managed with all of us and one bathroom I'll never know but somehow we did. As the older kids graduated from high school us younger ones had more space, but I can't even imagine how my mother managed it all. She died quite young at 55 so I never got to ask her all those questions. It may even be best not knowing how she felt about it all. When I got married I was determined to own a house and my husband and I bought our first house when I was 24 years old. I truly thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was a sprawling ranch on a heavily wooded half acre and a full basement with five separate rooms down there. Even today, I own a 1675 sq. foot condo with a full basement and two-car garage and I live alone. I sometimes feel guilty that I have so much when my mother had so little, but I am grateful every single day that I have the security of a roof over my head.

You are so right about what living like that fosters. You truly learn to share, give people space when they need it, pitch in with the chores, etc. Most of that for me came from having so many siblings, but even today I require so little to make me content. I do not accumulate stuff because I've always thought someone else could use it once I didn't need it any longer, so I made many donations to Salvation Army/Goodwill or just people I learned needed something that I had and didn't use. That part came from growing up without very much in the way of material things. All of my siblings are just like that.

I despise the trend of people buying 3,000 sq. ft. houses and they have only one child or two. What a waste of land and resources! Plus, when they were asked to stay home during a pandemic, they couldn't even abide by that even though they had these amazing houses. Tells me they have those homes only to show off.