M is for Mama 18

[JermajestyDuggar]

There’s nothing you can’t live without? 🤣🤣🤣 Says the overprivileged fundie princess with the stove which costs over $10,000. Whatever you tell yourself so you can sleep at night Braggie 🙄

Edited May 2 by JermajestyDuggar

[Maggie Mae]

I hate open concept houses almost as much as I hate Abbie's cluttery "style." I hate that open concept became a trend and I feel like I've been screaming at clouds since like 2008 when it first started being "the trendy way." It seemed like at the time everyone wanted it so that they could see the TV from everywhere. But it's so impractical. Noise just bounces around. Ever go to a party at a house with just the big cavern with a kitchen in the corner? It get so noisy that people are shouting at each other. Vs a normal house, where people can go into other spaces to socialize in smaller groups - you can have some people in the kitchen, some in the living room, some in the family room. And it's just so frustrating when you need to find a way to close the kitchen to keep dogs and kids out. 

I also think braggie's fridge is dumb. It comes with a pitcher for water. Great. I can buy a $35 pitcher with a filter and fill it in the sink and get the same result. 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

I also think braggie's fridge is dumb. It comes with a pitcher for water. Great. I can buy a $35 pitcher with a filter and fill it in the sink and get the same result.

And it probably won't leak!

[Mrs Ms]

1 hour ago, Ozlsn said:

And it probably won't leak!

Or at least won’t need a technician to fix…

[JermajestyDuggar]

I really hate the fancy appliances that companies put out these days. Like the fridges with a touch screen on it. Like why does my fridge need a touch screen? Wtf? 

[anachronistic]

I am pretty sure that that is the exact same fridge, or a very similar fridge, to the one my sibling and their spouse put in when they built their new house three years ago. It's fine except that the water that comes out isn't as cold as I prefer my water to be. 

I don't Love or hate open plan homes. They are very convenient for someone like my mother, who can't hear you calling from another room but who can tell that you're talking from across the room and use her lipreading/face reading skills to fill in what she doesn't hear. (she has a hearing loss.) My sibling has one and it's convenient when they are cooking because they can keep an eye on the kids. But they also have a playroom that is not part of the open plan, which I think is essential so that you are not continually stepping on Legos.

And I tend to think that people with three or more bathrooms are not cleaning their own bathrooms. Myself absolutely love having my own bathroom but then again I live alone. I think that having IBS and sharing a bathroom would be very difficult to do.

[JermajestyDuggar]

2 bathrooms works for us as a family of 4. But if we had more kids, I would probably want another toilet somewhere. 

[Pammy]

23 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

I think this is a spin off of open plan living - you can't just shut a door and hide the mess. The trend here that I find absolutely mindblowing is a bathroom per bedroom - who's cleaning them all??

Well, unless the people in the bedrooms are under about 10yo, the person who uses the toilet cleans the toilet!

(In quantity we have one toilet per bedroom, but it's more like one toilet per floor, plus one extra for the master bathroom. I clean the master bathroom and the main-floor multi use toilet. Each of my kids cleans 'their own' toilet.)

[Caroline]

17 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

I hate open concept houses almost as much as I hate Abbie's cluttery "style." I hate that open concept became a trend and I feel like I've been screaming at clouds since like 2008 when it first started being "the trendy way." It seemed like at the time everyone wanted it so that they could see the TV from everywhere. But it's so impractical. Noise just bounces around. Ever go to a party at a house with just the big cavern with a kitchen in the corner? It get so noisy that people are shouting at each other. Vs a normal house, where people can go into other spaces to socialize in smaller groups - you can have some people in the kitchen, some in the living room, some in the family room. And it's just so frustrating when you need to find a way to close the kitchen to keep dogs and kids out. 

I also think braggie's fridge is dumb. It comes with a pitcher for water. Great. I can buy a $35 pitcher with a filter and fill it in the sink and get the same result. 

I live in a neighborhood of Cape Cod houses, raised ranch houses, and a few Raeside Dame houses. It's about 50 years old with lots of trees and vegetation, yards for kids to run around in lots between each house, and walking trails behind every home. It's a fun place for kids to safely explore the outdoors.

 Across town there are a few of the open concept type homes that I always associate with the South. Very large, all the rooms open to one another and the two story foyer must be a nightmare to heat in a cold climate like ours. That type of house isn't very typical where I live. I imagine they are quite loud. I just need more of a division between public and private spaces in a home.

I also prefer the intimacy of a more traditional home and I also don't want to spend a fortune heating or cooling the house. If I'm not using a space I don't want to heat it. I am a fan of more than one bathroom though. When we renovated our house when we moved in 20 plus years ago I insisted we add another bathroom. One bathroom is never enough unless you live alone.  What if someone's sick? What if a toilet backs up? I need more than one for sure, and I don't mind cleaning in general, so that's not a problem. 

My other must-have for a house was a two car garage. We use the garage for its intended purpose and are lucky enough to have attic storage above it. I don't get people in our neighborhood who have a garage and don't use it, especially in winter. 

[Maggie Mae]

11 minutes ago, Caroline said:

 Across town there are a few of the open concept type homes that I always associate with the South. 

Interesting, the ones around here I associate with the west/southwest.  They are "cookie cutter" homes in planned neighborhoods. Every single house is the same - you can pick and choose which "features" you want, but all homes have to sort of match for whatever stupid HOA dystopian reason.  My house was remodeled into the "open kitchen" and I hate it so much. I want to be able to use my kitchen for cottage foods and sell my pickles/kimchi/salsa/tomato/bbq sauce out of my garage. But I can't, because I can't close the kitchen and prevent pet contamination. Even though the cats do not go on the counter, we clean everything, everything is temped and done correctly and we both have ServSafe and food handlers and alcohol handling cards. 

11 minutes ago, Caroline said:

I also prefer the intimacy of a more traditional home and I also don't want to spend a fortune heating or cooling the house.

I've found that windows are the biggest culprit. We keep our house pretty cool though. 

11 minutes ago, Caroline said:

If I'm not using a space I don't want to heat it. I am a fan of more than one bathroom though. When we renovated our house when we moved in 20 plus years ago I insisted we add another bathroom. One bathroom is never enough unless you live alone.  What if someone's sick? What if a toilet backs up? I need more than one for sure, and I don't mind cleaning in general, so that's not a problem. 

Same. Give me a bathroom for every bedroom, plus one for guests near the main area. We pay for a house cleaner though, because I would rather spend my time doing other things than trying to make my house as clean as I want it to be. 

11 minutes ago, Caroline said:

My other must-have for a house was a two car garage. We use the garage for its intended purpose and are lucky enough to have attic storage above it. I don't get people in our neighborhood who have a garage and don't use it, especially in winter. 

I live in what is arguably the most wintery of the winter states and so many people don't use garages as intended. Me included, because the garage is where I keep my kayak, paddleboard, bikes, and a bunch of other stuff.  I'd rather people park on the street and stash their stuff in garages than renting storage units.  Storage units are the worst waste of space for urban planning. 

[Expectopatronus]

I can’t imagine street parking over night all winter; how does your car start without being plugged in? Here the engine would freeze. 
My area is kind of the opposite of cookie cutter. The colours and design couldn’t be the same as houses beside or across the street from each other. 

[Maggie Mae]

1 hour ago, Expectopatronus said:

I can’t imagine street parking over night all winter; how does your car start without being plugged in? Here the engine would freeze. 
My area is kind of the opposite of cookie cutter. The colours and design couldn’t be the same as houses beside or across the street from each other. 

I plug in. If I parked in the garage I wouldn't plug in. But the garage is one stall and it's not super fair for me to put my car and not his truck (which wouldn't fit anyway). Also winters are getting warmer overall and I don't need to plug in as much, as I usually only plug in when it's below 20F. I use an extention cord. 

The garage is more useful for storage. We have so much outdoor stuff and only like 1600 square ft in this house. Great location and it's a tight housing market. 

[Melissa1977]

My grandma always said "architects don't cook" in reference to impractical building trends. 

Also there are peole who buy houses because they are impressive, but don't think about the practical side. I have a relative who built a house with a 2 story glass foyer (it very rare here) only to realise later that it needs a professional cleaning service their town hasn't (the windows are so high they need a high stair to be cleaned and that is more expensive that a normal cleaning service). So the cleaners come from a further town and it  increases the bill. They are a very clean couple and are desperate when it rains, the glass gets dirty but the cleaners can't come immediately. Also it's very sunny at summmer and cold at winter and the electricity bill is high. My conclusion is that 2 story *glass wall* is for the rich or for people not obsessed with cleanness.

[JermajestyDuggar]

6 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

My grandma always said "architects don't cook" in reference to impractical building trends. 

Also there are peole who buy houses because they are impressive, but don't think about the practical side. I have a relative who built a house with a 2 story glass foyer (it very rare here) only to realise later that it needs a professional cleaning service their town hasn't (the windows are so high they need a high stair to be cleaned and that is more expensive that a normal cleaning service). So the cleaners come from a further town and it  increases the bill. They are a very clean couple and are desperate when it rains, the glass gets dirty but the cleaners can't come immediately. Also it's very sunny at summmer and cold at winter and the electricity bill is high. My conclusion is that 2 story *glass wall* is for the rich or for people not obsessed with cleanness.

I live in a house built in 1948. So no new building trends anywhere to be found. I admit I’ve always hated the big two story open foyers and great rooms. For one thing, I always imagine it as wasted space. I think about how a bedroom could be on the second floor in that space. Then I also think about painting. I’m the person who does all the painting in our home. But if we lived in a house where there is a two story great room, I would have to hire it out. Because I’m afraid of ladders. I don’t trust them and I’ve seen too many people fall off of them. So that’s a bunch of money to pay someone to paint instead of doing it myself. On top of all that, I do wonder if it increases the heating and cooling bill in two story rooms. It may not be a huge increase, but I bet there is at least some increase. Especially if the upper windows aren’t able to be covered in the summer and there is direct sunlight. 

[Caroline]

13 hours ago, Expectopatronus said:

I can’t imagine street parking over night all winter; how does your car start without being plugged in? Here the engine would freeze. 
My area is kind of the opposite of cookie cutter. The colours and design couldn’t be the same as houses beside or across the street from each other. 

Where I live the engine won't freeze if you leave your car out all night in winter. But I was soooo tired of scraping the windshield every morning at 6:30. That was one of my main reasons for wanting a garage.

We're lucky because we have other protected spaces for storing things like the lawnmower, snowblower,  yard decor, etc. So the garage is just for the cars. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

For anyone who knows an ice storm is coming and doesn’t have a garage, they make covers for your windshield. 

[SassyPants]

If we had a contest for homes with the funkiest architecture, mine would be right up there. I live on a hill, near the ocean (so think tight, narrow lots) and my home is tri-level but only has living space on 2 floors. From the front of the house one would take 2 short flights of stairs and would enter the house on the second level (where there is no living space) and onto a platform. From there, one could go down a 1/2 flight of stairs to a bedroom, BR and a garage. If you went up a 1/2 flight of stairs from the front door, you would get to the rest of the house. We made it an open floor plan when we remodeled our kitchen, which had been tucked away behind 2 weird walls. The biggest issue with our house is having to lug everything upstairs, the rooms are narrow,  and the fact that there is limited wall space. Our backyard is accessible from our top floor. Also the street behind our house is at the top of the hill, so they look down on our house. Our house looks down on the houses across the street. Basically our house is built up the hill, while the houses on the other side of the street are built down the hill.

And for all you folks living in either snow country or in hades, you have my sympathy.

Edited May 3 by SassyPants

[anjulibai]

The place I live now has 2 full bathrooms and 2 half, for 4 of us. It's kind of nice that we all get a toilet. 

[GreenBeans]

On 5/3/2024 at 5:38 PM, SassyPants said:

If we had a contest for homes with the funkiest architecture, mine would be right up there. I live on a hill, near the ocean (so think tight, narrow lots) and my home is tri-level but only has living space on 2 floors. From the front of the house one would take 2 short flights of stairs and would enter the house on the second level (where there is no living space) and onto a platform. From there, one could go down a 1/2 flight of stairs to a bedroom, BR and a garage. If you went up a 1/2 flight of stairs from the front door, you would get to the rest of the house.

These kinds of houses can cause major issues once people get older. While you’re still young, it’s just an inconvenience to have stairs everywhere, but once you get older it gets really tough to move around. I’ve seen it happen with friends and family. At some point, they either need to move into a more accessible space, or they end up only using only the ground floor (if it has all the essentials, i.e. kitchen and bathroom).

My husband and I only bought an apartment - partly because we wanted to keep living in the middle of the city and there are no individual houses, but partly also because it will be so much easier to live in and maintain once we are older. It’s fairly small (at least by US standards - open kitchen and living room, two bedrooms, one bathroom), but it has a shower with no step, an elevator up from the garage and it has no stairs, so we got a cleaning robot that not only hoovers, but also cleans with water. It’s so amazing! You leave the house, and when you get back all the floors are clean and shiny!

[JermajestyDuggar]

6 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

These kinds of houses can cause major issues once people get older. While you’re still young, it’s just an inconvenience to have stairs everywhere, but once you get older it gets really tough to move around. I’ve seen it happen with friends and family. At some point, they either need to move into a more accessible space, or they end up only using only the ground floor (if it has all the essentials, i.e. kitchen and bathroom).

My husband and I only bought an apartment - partly because we wanted to keep living in the middle of the city and there are no individual houses, but partly also because it will be so much easier to live in and maintain once we are older. It’s fairly small (at least by US standards - open kitchen and living room, two bedrooms, one bathroom), but it has a shower with no step, an elevator up from the garage and it has no stairs, so we got a cleaning robot that not only hoovers, but also cleans with water. It’s so amazing! You leave the house, and when you get back all the floors are clean and shiny!

My great grandparents were extremely mobile for the majority of their lives. And even they didn’t use their upstairs. They used it for storage mostly. There was a bedroom and bathroom on their main floor so they used that. My grandma was so frugal that she closed all the vents upstairs and put a heavy blanket over the doorway to upstairs. Of course some heat still leaked up there so it wasn’t freezing up there in the winter. But they didn’t want to pay for heat on a floor of the house they barely used. 

[Cupcake79]

I live in Europe, in a rural area. Houses are of all kinds of types and styles. I don’t think I have ever visited a house with more than three bathrooms/half baths. Usually no more than two. Master bedrooms en suite are practicality non existent in our area and definitely uncommon in the whole country. So I don’t understand why you need multiple bathrooms in a normal size house. We have two bathrooms and get by fine even when we have two teenagers and a younger child. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

57 minutes ago, Cupcake79 said:

I live in Europe, in a rural area. Houses are of all kinds of types and styles. I don’t think I have ever visited a house with more than three bathrooms/half baths. Usually no more than two. Master bedrooms en suite are practicality non existent in our area and definitely uncommon in the whole country. So I don’t understand why you need multiple bathrooms in a normal size house. We have two bathrooms and get by fine even when we have two teenagers and a younger child. 

Growing up, my dad’s house had one bathroom for 5 people. It was a nightmare when all 5 of us were home. My dad took forever to take a dump in the morning. Plus everyone needed to shower, brush their teeth, and pee in that bathroom. We had to schedule things out. Like all kids had to shower at night. Not in the morning before school. And you had to quickly brush your teeth before dad got in there in the morning. Because he was in there for a good 45 minutes! I remember once when my sibling wouldn’t get out of the bathroom and I had an emergency. I ended up pooping my pants. It was horrible. So when we were house hunting in our current neighborhood, I said we must have 2 toilets. I even said it was ok if there was just a Pittsburgh potty in the basement as the second toilet. If you don’t know what a Pittsburgh potty is, it’s just a random toilet in the basement. People say it was for men who worked in the mines all day would come home and strip in the basement, wash up, and use the toilet down there so they didn’t make a mess in the regular bathroom. The basement was where all the clothing was washed anyway so it would make sense. We did see some houses with random basement toilets but didn’t buy them. We ended up with a bathroom on the first floor and a bathroom on the second floor. My kids spend a lot of time in the basement playing with toys and video games. I would love a Pittsburgh potty down there nowadays. 

[GreenBeans]

7 hours ago, Cupcake79 said:

I live in Europe, in a rural area. Houses are of all kinds of types and styles. I don’t think I have ever visited a house with more than three bathrooms/half baths. Usually no more than two. Master bedrooms en suite are practicality non existent in our area and definitely uncommon in the whole country.

Same here. 3 or 4 bathrooms in a house seem downright excessive to me. 😁 Here I would say nowadays the norm is 2 bathrooms in a house (sometimes, especially in older houses, only 1 bathroom upstairs where the bedrooms are plus an extra toilet downstairs where the living room/kitchen are). Similar in big apartments with 4 rooms, so living room plus 3 bedrooms or bigger. In smaller apartments, 1 bathroom is normal, in newly built ones often 1 bathroom and 1 extra toilet.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a house that has as many bathrooms as bedrooms here. It’s just not a thing.

[JermajestyDuggar]

5 minutes ago, GreenBeans said:

Same here. 3 or 4 bathrooms in a house seem downright excessive to me. 😁 Here I would say nowadays the norm is 2 bathrooms in a house (sometimes, especially in older houses, only 1 bathroom upstairs where the bedrooms are plus an extra toilet downstairs where the living room/kitchen are). Similar in big apartments with 4 rooms, so living room plus 3 bedrooms or bigger. In smaller apartments, 1 bathroom is normal, in newly built ones often 1 bathroom and 1 extra toilet.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a house that has as many bathrooms as bedrooms here. It’s just not a thing.

I don’t think all McMansions have this, but I’ve seen a lot that do. I babysat for a family that basically lived in a huge McMansion. And there were 7 bathrooms (2 of them were 1/2 bathrooms). I remember thinking I’m glad I’m the babysitter and not the house cleaner! 

Edited May 6 by JermajestyDuggar

[Marly]

5 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

Same here. 3 or 4 bathrooms in a house seem downright excessive to me. 😁 Here I would say nowadays the norm is 2 bathrooms in a house (sometimes, especially in older houses, only 1 bathroom upstairs where the bedrooms are plus an extra toilet downstairs where the living room/kitchen are). Similar in big apartments with 4 rooms, so living room plus 3 bedrooms or bigger. In smaller apartments, 1 bathroom is normal, in newly built ones often 1 bathroom and 1 extra toilet.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a house that has as many bathrooms as bedrooms here. It’s just not a thing.

I live in a (officially)3-bedroom apartment. We have one toilet and one 'bathroom'(=shower + sink). Growing up, all houses I ever visited only had one full bathroom (toilet + shower or bath + sink), usually upstairs on the bedroom floor, and one toilet downstairs. When I met my SO 13 years ago and I visited his mom and stepdad's house (3 story house), that was the first house I've ever been in that had 2 full bathrooms + an extra toilet on the ground floor. However, the second bathroom wasn't in the original plan of house. The reason they had 2 full bathrooms is because the stepdad wanted one floor completely to himself and MIL, where my SO and his sister weren't allowed to go. They had to hire a contractor to add an extra bathroom.
Having two full bathrooms is still very much the exception. Having only one toilet in a multiple story house is also very much an exception though. And in apartments that only have one toilet, the toilet and bathroom are usually separate (so no issues of someone needing to shower but not being able to because someone else is occupying the toilet for an inconsiderate amount of time and vice versa).  

I grew up in a family of five in a house with one bathroom (but two toilets total in the house), and it was never an issue. (There were a lot of issues with my mom not respecting closed doors, but that had nothing to do with there only being one bathroom😅). Sure, we had to coordinate who showered when, but that was never a problem. We all communicated with each other. (I can understand it's difficult when you don't communicate or when there's one person who feels their wants and needs always outweigh that of others). And it made the switch to student housing (where usually you only have one bathroom and one toilet as long as there's no more than 7 people) a lot easier, as I was used to having a 'shower schedule'.

Now, this is not to say I don't understand or see the need for more than one full bathroom. When you have enough room and enough money, and you are with 3+ people in a home, it makes sense to me. The fact is though that houses here are generally build smaller than standard suburb houses in the USA, +over 4/5ths of the country is too low for basements to be an option. So people generally have to choose between either a guest/hobby/workfromhome room (and even that is a luxury on the current market) or an extra bathroom. As a consequence, people with 2+ plus children who have the option of putting an addition on to their house will sooner opt for an extra bedroom than an extra bathroom.