please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

We have small ranch, barely 1000 sq ft, no basement, with an attic. We have 3 bedrooms and will have 2 bathrooms again within the next couple of weeks.

I LOVE having a ranch. If we had a finished basement and an open concept layout I could stay here.

We purge often. I'm a firm believer in if you have a bigger house you will just collect more crap. We opted not to buy dressers and instead had closet systems put in. Best decision ever..

We have the 2 kids in one bedroom for now. I like having them close together. Eventually we will have to split them up since we have a boy/girl.

We have our W/D right off our kitchen so it's easy to multitask.

please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

I have an L-shaped ranch, but the L is in the backyard, not the front. When you walk in my front door and go to the left it is the "sleeping wing" if you go to the right it is the "living wing." We don't have to worry about noise at all when DS is sleeping because there is a huge separation between our den and his room. I also don't have to worry about having the whole house clean when we entertain because the bedrooms are a separate area. I love our house and I love the style. We have a finished basement, but it is currently not really used and when it is it is adult space. The only drawback for me is that it's a long walk from the den to the master bedroom. If you forget something you may not want to go back for it. My first floor is about 2000 SF.
We have a 2nd floor over the bedroom wing. Currently we have family staying with us and they use the 2nd floor.

Re: please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

I absolutely love my ranch. We have a full basement that we finished. So after the kiddos go to bed me and the DH has movie night downstairs. I love all the bedrooms on one floor. All three of my kids are deep sleepers. Bombs could go off and no one would move lol!

We bought this ranch knowing we will be building up in the near future too.

Re: please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

Our ranch is 1700 sft. We have a 1300 sf, unfinished basement and a one car garage. Its 3 beds and 2 bath plus behind our garage we have a bedroom sized playroom. So over all the space works well.

The size of house is all a matter of how you use it. We feel ours is a little too small and that is mainly BC we like to entertain and it gets crowded fast. Ideally we would like to add a family room and add a little on to extend our eik area, making the house about 2100 sf.

With that I grew up in a 1000 sf cape with 2 siblings. I am sure my parents would have liked more space, but the space we had worked for all the family parties and sleepovers etc so it was fine.

Re: please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

I grew up in a ranch and kinda bought one. I say kinda because my house is really two floors, but my inlaws live upstairs so we only visit up there.

I grew up with a playroom in basement and we are doing same thing. So for us it works. We needed a place with room for two families and we wanted a bsement and a yard. We got it all in a great district.

please tell me what you love/hate about having a Ranch home and kids

I always wanted a split, but we ended up in a ranch. I love it, but fear it may feel a little too close for comfort when we have teenagers. Thankfully we have a full finished basement, so there is some getaway space, but right now my LO is too young to play down there by herself so all her toys are in the LR.
Oh and a positive is that when I was pregnant and on bedrest and then after my C-Section, it was so easy with everything on 1 floor. I could go from my bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to the couch with very few steps. LOL