How does your house work?

Inspired by the cold weather and the death of Carla's spare Tv i was thinking about how families use houses in different ways.

Some friends have a big house, TV in every bedroom and the kids help themselves to food from the freezer when they are hungry. They have a big sitting room by English standards, maybe 7 metres long. Usually just the two of them sitting there, but that does mean they get to watch what they want on TV.

Our house is much smaller. Our sitting room has three sofa's so we can seat about nine in comfort. The TV hanging on the chimney and there are DVD racks in the alcoves either side. There is a huge bird cage in winter as Ace likes to look out of the front window. Nothing else in there. That's all we need. When we watch TV or play games we do it here. We never argue about what to watch. My youngest son says it is because we only ever watched TV together we haven't been exposed to the range of programs that makes us have different tastes, or something like that (he is a bit of a know-it-all. When someone discovers a programme that they think we will all like then there is great excitement when we plan it, watch it and give our verdicts. Kids scrap about who gets which sofa sometimes as everyone loves the purple velvet one. Lol.

We don't always manage to eat together as we all have different work hours but what we do is cook a nice meal each day and try to make it something we reheats nicely or can be eaten cold, that way the last one in doesn't feel lost and forgotten.

In summer we are much more spread out through the house as we read, garden, chat, cook. We make up groups and then move about and make other groups. But in the winter we huddle together in one room with our laptops, TV, crafts, sketching and writing, It reminds me of Meerkats snuggling together for warmth!

Us, huddling together for warmth as Mum is too mean to heat the whole house.