5 reasons we need more space at home

18 months ago we moved into our new build, 4 bedroom house. It was a step up in size from where we had been previously, and seemed enormous when we looked around it. Big empty spaces, fitted wardrobes, huge kitchen diner, a garage.

But isn’t it funny how easily that space fills up? 4 kids, a dog, and all the possessions that come with having a family. It all has to go somewhere, and soon you find yourself tripping over piles of stuff on the stairs and wondering how you ended up with 10 footballs. I mean, 10?! Who needs that many balls anyway?

The 5 main reasons we need more space:

1. Bedrooms. We have a 4 bedroom house, and 4 kids, which means Max and Jacob share a room. Fine in theory – they are both boys, they get on well, they enjoy playing together. In practice, not so fine. They keep each other awake at night, they bounce from one bed to another, and they cannot play quietly in the mornings, meaning we are all awake at the crack of dawn. It would be absolutely amazing to just have 1 more bedroom…..
2. Toys. Oh my goodness, the toys. There are SO many toys in this house, and as mentioned above, we don’t have a spare room to use as a playroom. This means a lot of toys are stored in the kids rooms, and some in the living room. Which is fine, but it would be so lovely to have a dedicated play space. I have wondered about a garage conversion – it’s not like we ever put the car in the garage anyway – it’s just become a storage space for all those things that don’t have a home elsewhere. 
3. The dog. OK, she’s not that big and she doesn’t really take up much space, but when she is wet and muddy, it would be ideal to have some sort of boot room with a sink to clean her up, and a place to leave all the boots, coats and leads. 
4. Blog work. Blogging often means you end up with a lot of parcel deliveries and a huge amount of packaging which has to be stored somewhere until recycling day. At the moment it all ends up chucked in the garage or stuffed behind the bins at the side of the house. Is there a solution to this? I don’t know really, and I guess the garage is OK for storage, but it’s so easy to forget what is in there and end up with teetering piles of cardboard. 
5. Study space. As well as blogging, I am currently studying as a student midwife. This means a lot of time spent at a computer desk, which currently lives in the corner of the living room. Not only does this make it hard to concentrate sometimes, it also means that it’s hard to switch off. If the computer is there, next to you, it’s so easy to just log on to check your emails, or have a look at Facebook. If I had an office, I think I would find it much easier to switch off at the end of a work or study session. 

In all honesty though, is there ever a perfect solution? Even if we had a play room, the kids would trail the toys back into the living room. If we had an extra bedroom, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Max had sneaked back in to sleep with Jacob. I would probably still end up stuffing cardboard boxes behind the bin until recycling day. It’s always the way isn’t it? You expand to fill the space you have, and although there are some clever fixes and options, such as extensions, conversions and storage solutions, I don’t think anyone is ever 100% happy, are they?

If you could change anything about your house, what would it be, and why?