Tips for Living in a Multi-Generational House

Those that live in a multi-generational home know the challenges of doing so. If you're one of those people, you may be looking for ways to ease some of the more tumultuous times your household encounters, while maximizing the positives that go with having a wide range of ages throughout the house.

As the mother of eight, I found that a lot of the tips for living in a multi-generational house were similar to my own tricks for making things run smoothly in a house with every age kid from 19 down to 4. Here's a few that I thought were helpful from an old New York Times article from back in December of 2008.

Prevent Power Struggles

It's important to have a family "pow-wow" or meeting to discuss the importance of everyone's cooperation in compromising at times. If a multi-generational family is going to succeed, it will need the support of all family members involved in compromising their ideas when another member is trying to exercise his/her input regarding any given situation. With everyone's effort in this regard the entire family will benefit.

Divide and Rotate Bills

Rotating bills every 3 months or so is a good way to make sure that the situation is financially fair. Unless after looking things over you're able to see that some in the house are in a better position to handle the bills that are the most expensive. In that case, for the good of the family as a whole it might work out better to assign those bills according to individual income capability.

Addressing Problems and Concerns

Pick a good time of day to tackle family problems with other individual family members and then execute family issues at the chosen time. This really can work well as I've seen for myself in my large family. As a large family we often discuss major family issues over the dinner table. That's the time I finally have everyone gathered in one spot for longer than a minute, and also where we dive into issues that need to be further talked about. With everyone present at one time, things get adequately communicated.

Family Time vs. Personal Time

Personal time is important to re-group your thoughts as well as to rejuvenate yourself to keep moving forward. In this way you'll be better able to contribute to your multi-generational home in a positive and productive way. Balancing personal time with family time can be a challenge, but your family will need to connect as a whole to keep things running smoothly between individuals. Board games, movies, or perhaps a picnic in the park with the entire family are just a few suggestions that can work well to provide unity among family members, keeping the family morale and commitment to each other and the household strong.