Is multi-generational living right for you? Good question and one that may not be easily answered.
Throughout our married lives, Jim and I have had a lot of different people live with us, and I’m not just talking about short visits or vacations. We’ve had a friend, our parents, an aunt and an uncle plus married children live with us before which involved periods of time from 5 months to 20 years. Because others have lived with us throughout our 37 years together, we are comfortable with having people around. I guess you could say that becoming a multi-generational household wasn’t a tough decision for us to make.
Things to Know About Our Families:
- As the title of this blog indicates, Faith and Shawn moved in with us by choice. Finances are not why we chose to live together. It was a decision made so we could spend more time together as family.
- We all live in a 5 bedroom, 4600 sq. ft. log home–2300 up and 2300 down–located on 28.5 acres. There are two full baths and bedrooms upstairs, while downstairs there are the remaining three bedrooms featuring a “Jack and Jill” bath combination (one tub/shower area with a half bath on each side).
- Some of our friends and family think we’re crazy for living together, but that’s okay with us. Some of these same people thought we were “peculiar” when we decided to have two more children when Jim and I were 40 and 42. Now they understand because Jeremy and Grace and 17 and 15 and are two terrific kids. Time will prove us right about living together, too!
Things I Remember Thinking:
- What will it be like to have little ones around again to raise?
- How will decisions about finances be handled?
- How will discipline be handled amongst numerous adults?
- Who will do what?
- How will our living spaces be used?
- How will privacy be affected?
While your questions may be the same as mine or even slightly different, there seems to be some definite things to consider before moving in with other family members. Here are some consistent topics we discovered when doing some research for this point.
Space
Consider how much living space you will need for your new multi-generational household. Take stock of the possessions your families have and try to decide realistically what is necessary to function as a healthy household. Will your possessions fit into your current space, or will it be necessary to downsize or will it be necessary to seek a new place of residence for all of you?
At our house, it took us almost 10 months to unload storage sheds, move rooms around, and throw and give possessions away before we felt like we had officially finished moving in. We decided not to build, although we were going to initially. Because of this decision, all the bedrooms (except Jim and Vickie’s) and bathroom spaces were changed around. The kitchen and main living areas remained the same.
Bathrooms
How will these be divided up? How many people will be sharing each bathroom? This can be a touchy subject because a bathroom can be such a private space. How will the counter space be used? Will products be shared with others? Is there ample room for storage?
We found it necessary to reassign bathroom spaces so that Faith’s family and children would have better access to the Jack and Jill space downstairs. Before they moved in, my mother was the only one who used one of these bathrooms. Now the six of them share these spaces more equally.
Layout
Depending upon how you like to live, it may be necessary to rearrange the layout of your home. If noise and being around others doesn’t bother you much, you may be fine with the way things will continue to be when others move in. However, if you need peace and quiet, it may be necessary to add on additional spaces like bedrooms or living areas in order for you to have some privacy.
Finances
Money can be a very touchy and difficult subject to talk about openly, but these need to be discussed openly and honestly. Will it be necessary to pay rent, or will the additional family member(s) need to only help with additional expenses? Will it be necessary to help with utilities, groceries, yard work, Internet, etc.? It may require several discussions in order to figure out all that will be involved in combining households.
When we were discussion living together, we tried to be as thorough as possible; however, there are some things that come up that are unexpected like a trash compactor, fixing the air conditioner, and replacing the water heater.
You can read about how we decided to handle our finances in our post entitled, “Finances in Our Multi-Generational Household.”
Lifestyles
How do each of you like to live? Are you one who likes to stay up late and night and sleep in, or is it the other way around? Are there problems with how each family keeps house? Is one a slob while the others are neatniks? Does one family have a carefree attitude about life while you like everything planned out? Discussing things like this will help each party know what kind of house rules to make.
Here at our house, our routines are pretty crazy simply because of Jim’s working schedule. Every day of every week of every month he has a different schedule while Shawn is a regular 9 to 5:30, five days a week schedule. Fortunately, we’re all pretty easy going and flexible about many things. Most of us grownups like a house that is neat and tidy so we all pitch in at different times to keep things picked up that find their way out of place.
Chores
Sharing and pitching in to help with the daily running of the home will definitely need some attention. Who will do the dishes, the cooking, the yard work, and the grocery shopping? While some jobs will be bigger and may take longer, there are more hands to help get things done.
We’ve done a pretty good job of assigning many of the things that need done around our home like mowing, grocery shopping, and cooking. Fortunately, there are many things we all just seem to pitch in and help to get done like dishwashing, straightening up, and pet care.
Parking
In this area, try to figure out how parking will work. Will it be necessary to move vehicles around just so you can come and go when necessary? Is there enough offstreet parking for your vehicles? Will you need to add some parking spaces in your yard?
Fortunately, we had enough parking available to our families that this wasn’t a big deal. We did, however, have to decide which of our vehicles would be allowed to park the closest to the house and which ones would park down the hill of our yard. With six cars involved in our situation, it was necessary to make a few choices.
Duration
So how long do all of you plan to live together? Is it only temporary, or is it for the “long haul?” Try to openly discuss your expectations so that everyone is aware of what you plan to do about living arrangements.
How will you handle living arrangements when members of the household desire to have guests over? Where will additional visitors sleep? How will you handle dinner plans for having company over to eat?
These require planning and careful consideration so your living venture can prove successful. Communication can help avoid difficult situations and maintain healthy family and friend relationships.
Most of the time it is just the 10 of us eating together and sleeping here. We do enjoy having other family members over when they can visit. Plus, Faith and Shawn have had other family members from Shawn’s side of his family visit with us from out of town. While it is noisy and crazier for a short period of time, we all manage to make it work.
Hopefully the questions we raised in this post will give you some good starting points for discussion if you are considering becoming a multigenerational household like we have done.
We’d love to hear about how you are handling your discussions about this area of life and what decisions you made that you think would be helpful to others.
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