I’m visiting my mom, who lives with her boyfriend of several years. As a New Yorker, this place is huge - a garage for two cars, two showers and a half, a dining room separate from a kitchen and a foyer, and more space that I don’t know how to name correctly. I’d say it’s a big house, not a huge house, somewhere in Pennsylvania where you can afford something like this on a mortgage without robbing a bank, I guess.
I’ve lived in NYC for over a decade, and I’m used to small spaces. My new bedroom is huge compared to anywhere else I’ve lived before, but the apartment itself is small, but not in a contrasting way, it’s comfy. I don’t understand why people need all this space.
Most people my age (40s) have a family and kids, so a few more bedrooms make sense, two bathrooms and showers, sure, but let’s say you only have one kid, or maybe the kid moved out, or maybe you just don’t have kids. I think (and I may be wrong?) most people live in houses, and these houses have space, and, well, what do you do with this space?
Over here, they love plants: 📷

And then there’s the art they like to get, and the basement has a lot of tools and additional storage, and then there’s another old fridge in the garage, and the dining room has a table, but you can also eat in the kitchen - but why? I feel like I’m criticizing and not coming from the angle of “this is wrong,” I just don’t get it. Maybe if I were to live in a place like this for a while, I would. What do you get out of the extra space and extra stuff?