As I recall, they made do with what they had. Not that I was around in the 20s -40s, but my in-laws were. They had a 2 br apartment in the city. In those days, you were a lot closer. I mean physically closer. So the living room also had the desk in it where my FIL did a lot of his work. When he needed to work, everyone was banished to their rooms so he could have quiet or MIL took DH out to see the city...the park, the mueseums. DH's room also had a large desk that was more like a work table for various projects that were being done.

The kitchen had an eat-in area that was a table pushed up against the wall...you couldn't sit at the table unless you shut the door and you skooched your way onto the chair as you couldn't pull them out any further. And you did a lot of butt rubbing if more than 1 person were in the kitchen at a time as the aisle was so narrow.

Open concept was not around so small rooms allowed for more separation for more members of the family. Sq footage was limited, so open spaces would have meant no privacy. Unless you had siblings in which case you were sharing a lot including your bedroom anyway. And the entire family took turns using the one bathroom.

When I was growing up, Mom's bedroom had the sewing machine in it so it became the project room too. The TV room (only tv in the house) was maybe 10x12 with a small sofa and a side chair where we would all cram....When I had friends over, the floor was typical seating for someone.

My great grandmother had a 3 br home to raise 13 children in. There was a tiny master...the size of a pantry... off the kitchen that was just enough room for a bed and a dresser, the bedrooms upstairs were in an attic space....one was for the 4 boys, the other was for some of the girls. The other girls converted the living room into a bedroom every night. My mother told me how my great grandmother spent a lot of time cooking and crocheting and doing laundry and raising a garden and chickens in the back yard even though they lived in the city. Back then everyone had chickens because it was such a cheap source of protein between the eggs and finally the old hen.

And of course vacations were expensive so rarely done. Flying was unheard of and driving prior to WWII was a real challenge as both roads and tires were poor. Business travel was rare, unless you considered the year great grandfather went to PA to work in the coal mines, only to find that what little money he made, he owed to the company store anyway so he came back home. Most folks walked to work...I recall Mom walked home for lunch every day and then walked back. If not, people took buses and they had trolleys back then too. So people were at home a lot more. Playing the piano, reading, listening to radio, playing games...board games and card games were common activities which all took place in whatever space you had.

And, back then, people hung out with people...it wasn't a formal thing where you needed an invite for a specific time...people would drop by any time to say hello and visit. And of course, the first thing you got, if you were a man, when you walked in the door was a shot and a beer. Or there was always a cup of coffee at the ready....so socializing was a big activity. Dad used to talk about how, since his dad had a truck, on the summer weekends, they would drive through the community with anyone who wanted to, hopping in the back of the truck for a ride to the beach where they'd spend the day. Mom and her best friend would walk back and forth to the rollerskating rink...she skated a lot in those days....

Interesting question. I think people spent more time at home then, not less...my MIL, 90, recalls that housekeeping took up far more time and effort in that era than now. Fewer labor saving devices and technology was less advanced. Women I think spent a lot of time just managing the routine stuff like cleaning and cooking. Which is another difference-people didn't eat out the way our culture does. No fast food and restaurant meals were a treat for most folks, not a weekly or even daily part of normal life.

Kids may have been running around more but I think they were doing it closer to home, and certainly with much less structure! None of the soccer-music-tutoring-play date type of activities. Again, kids today probably spend more time away from home than kids did then.

As for stuff, my house was built in 1950 just after WWII and at that time was considered an upper middle class dwelling. However, there are 4 closets in the entire home: one in each bedroom and one single linen closet in the hallway. No walk in closets either. The bathrooms are 5x8 so not much space for storage in there either. People simply didn't have or expect to store so much back then.

Considering the man of the house likely didn't work an 8-5 job, he'd have been gone most of the day. Women worked all day doing the housework (laundry, cooking, mending, cleaning). Kids would have had school, and play outdoors and since they had few toys, there would not have been need to store them. Likely the kids shared small beds.

My mom grew up on a farm, so most of the day (not at school) was spent working the farm or the garden. The house was pretty small and didn't have indoor plumbing till the early '50's! She and her sister shared a bed, as did her brothers. Their rooms were on the 2nd floor-very, very tiny! Heat was provided by the cook stove, as well as being the source of hot water. She told me they didn't bathe in the tub until Sat. nights because they went to church on Sunday. The kids played in the creek so they stayed cleaner during the week-otherwise it was just washing up with a basin. During winter they all just stayed in to conserve warmth, and listened to the radio or read the bible when they weren't reading their school books. Also spent a lot of time on Sundays visiting after church. Life was centered around church and church activities, also since it was farm life, they spent a lot of time at grange activities..

She told me that when she moved to Los Angeles when she was 18, the apartment she shared with 3 other girls was almost as big as the house she'd grown up in! My father's parent's home was nearly a mansion to my mom-it was a suburban, post war California rambler.

The house I lived in until I was six had one bathroom, next to the dining room (which was probably supposed to be the MBR).

There were three rooms upstairs, one of which was a walk through and these were the bedrooms we used.

The kitchen table needed to be pulled out from the wall to sit at and pushed back when you were done.

It was typical where I grew up for people to have one boy's bedroom one girl's bedroom no matter how many people that entailed, and the parents' room, and one bathroom. Generally they did have to pull the kitchen table out to eat at it and push in back when finished.

Most people didn't have a formal dining room like we did. Depending on how it connected to the rest of the house it became a play room, a TV room, or a bedroom for either the eldest child or a grandmother or somebody like that.

We played in people's unfinished or partly finished basements if we weren't outside. People used their garages. I knew people who rolled out indoor outdoor carpet in their garages, had screens for the doors (or not) and sat out there all summer like it was a room.

There was not a lot of unutilized space. When we moved into our new house and there was a separate living room and den and there was a bathroom in the master bedroom and a powder room on the first floor, and we each had our own rooms, we got called spoiled and it got called a "mansion".

People look at it now and think the kitchen is too small, the bathrooms are too small and the bedrooms are too small.

I have a small family and a smaller than US average size house and my English husband and inlaws all roll their eyes when I refer to our home as small. Americans have so much more land and thus space than so much of the world and that coupled with more disposable income than most has led to a bigger is not only better attitude but one that has us believing it is needed not just wanted:(.

I wanted a smaller home than my parents had because I never felt close to them figuratively and literally. We were all in our own corners of a very large home on a very large plot. It was often very lonely:(. I do not know if a smaller house would have help this isolation because I assume many families in big houses are indeed closer than mine is but I find it easier to blame the house not the people so I have a home inwhich we are forced to be close in hopes that we will be close knit:).

The house I grew up in was 850 sq foot. I graduated out of my crib when I was six years old and my older sister moved out. Few people remember their crib like I do. Having all five children of the same sex made living in a small house much less complicated.

My father and Uncle built and ran a small lumber mill. When the noon whistle blew, my Mom had "dinner" ready for all, including employeees. We crammed ourselves inside the kitchen to eat as there was no dining room.

When I was five, my Mother went to work. She left at 6:30 in the morning and returned home by 5:00 to cook, clean, tend the garden and can food in the fall. I have not met anyone who worked as hard as she did.

Before we remodeled and tripled the size of our 1940's Colonial-style house, it was extremely small and cramped. The coat closet was not even the depth of a hanger; it had a handful of hooks. The kitchen (now a laundry room) had 2 cupboards and a half-size dishwasher. The dining room (now a foyer) was the largest public room in the house. The living room was essentially a hallway. There was no bathroom on the main floor, requiring guests to traipse upstairs to use the facilities. The 3 bedrooms had tiny (door width) closets. The hall bathroom had a child-size sink; the door opened up against it. After the addition/remodel, the daughter of the original owner came by and asked to see the house; her family of 6 had lived in it for several years.

She said all the families on our street had large families who lived in the original homes, some smaller than ours. We are a family of 4. It made me feel greedy--and curious about how much we have changed as a society, that we found our original house impossible for comfortable living.

No romanticizing the past for me, I like our big house, big yard and room for solitude and quietness.
I like indoor plumbing too along with a washing machine and ac!

There is nothing wrong with a large house, in and of itself. What there are are better or worse motivations for wanting one.

One of the reasons I think we need larger houses now is that everything is noisier. This runs counter to the fact that most everybody wants big and then they want "open".

Growing up we got four channels, and we had one of the very early cable systems where I grew up. We got two radio stations clearly. Most people had one stereo that the kids shared.

So maybe you watched the same TV show or maybe two different shows in two different parts of the house. The stereo was shared and you either reached an agreement or somebody wore headphones.

When I go home at holidays, there are often 5 laptops in use, and there used to be four TVs each of which would be tuned to something different. The people not on the computer may be doing stuff on their phones or have an iPod.

We may all start out in the kitchen around the table but at some point it just gets too noisy and we retreat.

I haven't read the previous responses, but the home I grew up in, as a family of 5, is larger than the house my family lives in now, a family of 6. Actually, square footage, my house isn't that much smaller, but it's three stories, versus my parents' rancher, which has a better floor plan and doesn't have stairs taking up space.

I contemplate moving all the time, not because I want a much more space, but because I'd like a better floor plan, but for a variety of reasons, we are making due.

My family growing up spent a lot more time at home than my family does now. For most of my childhood, my mother was a SAHM who was home most of the day. While we were all involved in after school activities, they certainly did not take up nearly as much time as my kids' activities do today. We are on the go every day after school, and weekends we are gone most of the day, or coming and going with just an hour or two here and there at home.

In terms of living space, my house growing up had three "living space" areas outside of bedrooms and the kitchen - we had a formal living room, the family room and the den - the den was really my dad's office but there was a small TV in there so sometimes we got to go in there if we wanted to watch something different than the rest of the family. Now, my house as a family room and a small basement rec room but no formal living room - those two rooms have TVs. However, we don't watch much TV. Rule in our house is no TV for the kids during the school week and on weekends, we aren't home much. Sometimes we are all watching together in the family room or the boys will go in the basement to watch sports while my youngest and/or oldest dd watch something else in the family room.

Because of the size and set up of our house, there is quite a bit of togetherness unless the kids escape to their bedrooms. The girls have their own rooms, but the boys share. I actually don't mind our smaller than average home, especially given our family size. I do wish that I had an office - that's the one thing I really miss. I kind of prefer using all the space we have rather than several rooms that rarely get used. I just wish I could tweak a few things to make the floor plan a little better.

My parents had 5 kids in a 900 sq.ft house and we moved when #6 was born. We moved into the house that my mom was raised in and it was probably 1500 sq. ft. and it had all the required rooms but none of them were very large. Bunkbeds had to be used because the bedrooms were too small for 2 beds and my little sisters slept in a large landing on the top floor. We were lucky though because we did have two bathrooms and in those days that was a luxury.

When my DH and I were looking for our forever home in 1989 that was the heyday of the McMansion explosion. We had one child and another on the way and we were moving out of a too-small 900 sq.ft. townhouse. And yea - I see the irony in that. We did not want a McMansion and our instructions to our agent was nothing larger than 3000 sq.ft. and preferably smaller and a home in which a family had already been raised. The home that we bought was owned by a family that had raised two sons in it, just as we have done.

Before TV, and to some extent before radio, it was easier to do different things in the same room. Homework, reading the newspaper, sewing or knitting, could all be done by different people in the same space.

Once radio appeared, it created noise. Then the shared space had to be more regulated. You had to get your homework done before the radio program the whole family listened to came on, or be banished to your room or the the kitchen.

I think some families did more things together in the past. They'd all listen to the same radio program or watch the same TV show or play cards or a board game. There wasn't the amount of other activities to do--only one TV or radio per house, no computer, no video games, fewer places for kids to hang out.

Also, kids might spend a lot more time outdoors. Even in the 60s, when I was growing up, I spent most summer days outside, coming indoors for the bathroom and lunch. After school, I was outside unless the weather was awful.

At one point when I was a kid, my family of nine lived in a three bedroom house with one bathroom, a galley kitchen and a combination living/dining room. It was not as cramped as you might think, because we kids did not have a lot of stuff. We all did our homework at the same time at the dining table, and had to be quiet if we finished before the older kids did. That usually meant going outside if it was still light out. I don't remember any negative feelings about that house, even though it was probably about 1200 sq. feet.

However, as a teenager with three brothers who thought they were forming the world's best band, I was very happy to be living in a in three-story Victorian with 13 rooms and a basement to banish the hopeful musicians to.

Our house is large by numbers, but most everything is used by our family and it's not at all pretentious (huge foyer...)
We certainly could do without some of the rooms, but it's what we have and meets our needs and I can't change it.
I don't like it just because it's big. I have often thought if I could build a house just for me, it might be smallish but oh so exquisite in detail and charm.

Blfenton, we leased 'Mom's' house to a family with two young boys (babies, really) Since 'Mama' raised three boys there, I felt certain the house knows what to do with little boys. it's just under 1200 sq ft. History repeating itself.

My house is big by my standards. We bought it because it had room for our business in the basement. There are many days where I don't go near all the rooms, and weeks where I visit just to clean them.

I love a big foyer and wish ours was about three times bigger! It's great for inside parties and I miss our old house foyer..Welcoming and gracious. I miss the wide hallways, too. To me that was not wasted space at all.

Oops. Sorry. Double post happened somehow.

This post was edited by camlan on Thu, May 9, 13 at 19:03

We had the tiniest house (the family homestead) that we moved into to be with grandma after grandpa died. So there were 5, then 6 of us in that little house. Dad added a little onto it to make the living area larger, but honestly, now I don't know how we did it. We certainly never felt cramped, although we must have been. There was always someone bustling around in the kitchen or the garden. We kids had the run of the neighborhood and township and mom and dad never worried about us as long as we were home for dinner. It seems that the whole neighborhood came to our yard to play and as cramped as we were, there was no end to the family and friends that somehow stayed overnight. I guess we just made do without comparison and judgement. Dad worked hard at his own business and tho we never wanted for anything, we weren't excessive in anything either. Homework was at the kitchen table or on the living room floor; one TV, one radio, etc. My grandfather had the telephone installed on the utility porch, because he wouldn't have it in the house. When he died, it was brought into the living room, but whenever I see people walking around with cell phones and ear bugs, and i pads, I think grandpa would be spinning around in his grave. Small spaces made for family time; we went to bed early (except on monday nights, when we went to bed after I Love Lucy) and got up early; ate a real breakfast and walked a mile to school. As small as our house was, tables were set up end to end in the living room for big family/friends holiday dinners (the kids' table in the kitchen).
I've lived in a lot of houses since those childhood days and have always preferred smallish houses.

annie1971 - you mention having the run of the neighbourhood. We did as well. During the summer school holidays we would disappear after breakfast and arrive home by dinner. My mom knew that someone would feed us lunch and my mom would take her turn feeding the neighbourhood kids.

Interesting topic about smaller homes. We did a whole house reno 3 years ago with the thought of staying here for another 10 or 15 years. My kids, although still at home, are both finished university , have just started their first career jobs and are seldom home. Suddenly this 3000 sq.ft. home of ours feels a whole lot bigger than it has in a long time and I don't know if we will last that long in this big space. A smaller space may be in our future sooner and it may be coming up time to pass this home onto another young family.

We have a large home, and we are getting ready to put it on the market, and build a small one. I'm pretty excited to get rid of a lot of things and simplify my life as far as a house goes. It will be nice to take care of a small one for a change. If we don't like it, we can always go bigger.

I don't know though, that small houses need to be romanticized any more than large houses. My mother had cousins who grew up in 25 room houses with staff and were neither particularly more or less content than her immediate family, it's just what they were used to.

Our current home is about 1200 square feet, 3 BR 1.5 BA. I'm sure the half bath in the master was a huge luxury when it was built in the 60's. I try to remind myself that this house was enough for a family. I need to do a huge reorganization in the home office this summer. Space seems tight. We have no basement, and we have no kids.

My first childhood home was actually pretty large plus it was a "two-flat" with an apartment upstairs. My grandparents had a grocery store, so the store was remodeled into living space. The house was somewhat "shotgun" style in its rooms with front room, LR, DR, and then kitchen in the back. We also had "woodsheds" for storage at the back of the house. However, we had very small bedrooms and 5 kids were doubled up in them. My one brother had the front room as his BR. My parents' BR was off the kitchen (again really small) as was our only bath which was decently sized. We had a large clawfoot tub and never had a shower until we moved from that when I was 11.

Just did a Google image of the house, and it is still there (a lot of old housing has been demolished such as my other grandmother's house on the next street) and seems to be in decent condition considering it is over 100 years old. Based on its location, it's worth pretty much nothing.

Shotgun houses seem to becoming fashionable again; old ones are widely being preserved and improved now. They fit a maximum of living space into a narrow lot, allowing detached houses to fit in the space where usually only townhouses would fit. I almost moved into one across the street from where I live now; you have to walk through one room to get to another, but the rooms are all big because of the lack of hallways and foyers.