Bigger Family, Less Space
Trading up when you have kids may not be an option. So how to cope with cramped?

By Terri Rupar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2009

When Brendan Canty and Michelle Cochran moved to Tenleytown in 1997, their house seemed big.

"We had no kids, and we thought the house was so huge -- I mean crazily huge," Cochran said.

But four children later, it doesn't seem so huge. Over the summer, they got rid of some stuff, packed up a lot more, redid their floors and painted, all getting ready to sell. They found a house that was bigger and needed some work. They prepared an offer, then slept on it.

They woke up the next morning and watched the markets plummet, and decided to stay put.

When housing prices were rising each year, people found it easy to trade up to bigger places as their families grew. But prices have changed course, and now even well-off families such as Canty and Cochran's are dealing with having more people in smaller spaces than they ever expected.

Canty, who has six siblings, didn't have a room of his own until people started moving out. But American houses have steadily grown bigger over the years -- and few families have seven children -- so for some, one bedroom per child is the expectation.

In 1991, the average American home and 1,672 square feet and 53 percent had three or more bedrooms, according to the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey. By 2007, it had grown to 1,789 square feet, and more than 60 percent had three or more bedrooms.

Mabel, who's 22 months old, is sleeping in a crib in Cochran and Canty's room. Asa, 11, has the room that used to be the nursery. The two younger boys -- Leo, 8, and Truett, 5 -- share the other bedroom, where all three boys slept when Mabel was littler.

Canty and Cochran count themselves lucky. Their house isn't tiny, about 2,200 square feet. They put an addition on the back about six years ago. Two years later, they turned what used to be three separate rooms into a big, open kitchen and dining area.

"We've done some really big things to our house, and we had sort of thought that would be it," Cochran said.

Canty, who was in the D.C. rock band Fugazi, has already given up his music studio space in the basement, and Cochran gave up office space upstairs. But now, with three bedrooms for six people, more might be necessary. The basement is largely finished and could be turned into bedroom space.

Nadine Greenfield-Binstock and her husband, Andy Binstock, don't have the option of adding more space. They live in a condo of less than 800 square feet in Dupont Circle with their son, Eliav, 2. Most units in their tier of the building have just one bedroom, but a previous owner had closed off an alcove with glass doors. When the Binstocks moved in, that was the office, but now it's Eliav's room, with extra curtains on the door to keep the light out.

Curtains don't keep out sound, though, which means the Binstocks usually retreat to their room after Eliav goes to bed, whether it's to eat dinner, read, work or talk. But in a few months, they'll need to be quiet there, too: They're expecting child No. 2 in July. They can't afford to buy another home until they sell their current one.

"As it is, it's really uncomfortably tight," Greenfield-Binstock said. They've already gotten rid of a lot of things and returned some of Eliav's bigger Hanukkah presents. Her genealogy research is in a storage space downstairs, although the maternity clothes have had to come out. When they show their place to prospective buyers, they move the high chair, a bunch of toys and three boxes of stuff into a neighbor's unit.

Sampson Lee Blair, an associate sociology professor at the University at Buffalo, said that after years of dropping, American fertility rates have been slowly but steadily increasing. That has led to some families feeling squeezed.

"With increasing fertility rates, you've got to put them somewhere," he said, making it difficult to find privacy.

Space isn't a problem just in the District. Seth and Keri Alberts live in a condo in Reston with two small children. It's about 1,600 square feet, with two bedrooms and a loft, which has been divided into a bedroom and a playroom.

They moved there in May 2006 after having lost bidding wars on eight homes.

"We were kind of desperate," Keri Alberts said. They have met with two real estate agents, who told them they would probably lose $70,000 if they sold now, so they figure they're staying put. Even when the market improves, she said, she thinks they'll have trouble selling, especially with $405-a-month condo fees.

The loft makes things difficult for the Albertses -- it means they have to be quiet at night after their son goes to bed. It's also tough to have guests.

Corinne Brandstetter and Robert Brown also live in Reston with two children. Their condo has two bedrooms and one bath. Their son, Andrew, 3 1/2 , is in the second bedroom, and their daughter, Minnie, 9 months, is in a crib in her parents' bedroom. She's not a good sleeper, so Brandstetter sometimes retreats to her son's room.

Like many families without a lot of space, they frequently go through drawers and throw things out, and they don't keep a lot of toys. They go to the library for books. When Brandstetter's brother came to visit with a big tool bench for their son, they told him to take it back. They recently joined Freecycle, a Web site that helps people give things away.

It's not all bad.

"I actually like being in a small place because I always know where the kids are," she said. "I don't have to worry about anyone falling downstairs. . . . They're always pretty close to me."

Families looking for ways to save space say they get rid of things often and try to make household items perform double duty. Karen and Will Spencer are expecting their second child this month. They have a three-floor, 1,380-square-foot townhouse in the Fairlington section of Arlington. They want to move but figure that the newborn can stay in a Pack 'n Play playpen in their room until they find a new home. A chest that had wrapping paper in it became a dresser, and there's a changing table on top of it.

"It's forced us to be really brutal about what we need in our house," Karen Spencer said.

Andy Binstock and Nadine Greenfield-Binstock have spent a lot of time searching for pieces of furniture that are the exact right size and provide the maximum storage. Andy moved his law books to his parents' place in Potomac, and they got rid of their blender and griddle. Their china is in Boston, with Nadine's parents. They sometimes use their car for storage. They trade space-saving tips with friends in similar situations and quit going to Costco because they didn't have space for huge packs of anything.

The Binstocks looked into Murphy beds, which fold into a wall, but decided they were too expensive. Interior designers suggest other ways to save space, such as lofting a bed and putting a desk or other furniture underneath it.

Lisa Adams of Adams Design in the District said that if renovations are possible, homeowners should try to find space that's not being used as efficiently as it could be and repurpose it. Adams did that for her daughter, turning a closet into a sleeping alcove.

"Generally, you try to steal from spaces that don't need to be as big as they are," she said.

Rick Matus, who runs the design/build department for Case Design in Bethesda, said building lofted beds in bedrooms or work space in a dining area can be helpful. You're limited in a small space, making it difficult to chop it into rooms, he said.

Outside space helps, too, Cochran said. Their house backs up to Fort Reno Park, allowing that to become like their back yard. Cochran and Canty said they feel as though they've made their space work.

"We used to be people who were happy anywhere, and we still are people who can be happy anywhere," Canty said.