When Your Multigenerational Household Life Stages Shift (And the System Has to Flex)
Article may have affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you. Big thanks for supporting my small business.
Multigenerational living and shared household duties (especially outdoors) has always looked the same, until this year. You know that we are selling our multigenerational home which has ensued a crazy amount of extra yard work and this year, things are much different.
For years, the yard was a team sport.
We didn’t really assign it or make a chore chart but we all had assumed roles. My dad, my son, my mom, Jim, and me …. someone on the mower, someone in the flower beds, someone hauling brush to the pile, someone trimming the endless amount of shrubs and trees, some cleaning the patios, you get the drift.
Five people across three generations and it just worked. That’s the rhythm you build when you’ve lived multigenerationally long enough. Roles settle. Labor distributes. Nobody thinks about it much because it doesn’t need to be thought about.
This spring (and even last year I started to see a change), the rhythm broke. And what happened next taught me something I already knew in theory but hadn’t fully lived yet.
The Team Went Offline — All At Once!
My son has a full-time plumbing job now.
His own schedule, his own life forming exactly the way you hope it does when you raise a kid. So after school yard work is non-existant and weekends are more difficult to get on his schedule!
Last Fall, my dad started having AFib issues and the heart doctor basically told him, he needed to chill out and stop climbing ladders and doing labor intensive chores around the house. He came through it fine, but “came through it” comes with a new set of limitations.
No more intensive work but the ride on lawn mower is still allowed 😂.
Jim is in the final push on a handful of projects, including the multigenerational compound build he’s been working on for months. His business alone is a full-time job x 2 but stack that on top of the two Airbnb properties we needed to get ready for the busy season, both of which Jim and I are tackling ourselves on weekends — yard work, house projects, outdoor prep …..there is simply nothing left in the tank for the main house and yard.
My mom, as mentioned, is doing her own version of heavy lifting inside.
Purging 40 years of accumulated life that they brought from our previous house when we moved here in 2018 (they did get rid of 80% of it when we moved last time so it’s nowhere near as bad!) but it’s not a small job. She has been shredding and burning paperwork from like 30 years ago for weeks!
So this year, we hired out all of the exterior landscaping. 😅 Because let’s face it, selling a house, nevermind a multigenerational house with 3 generations (plus a fiance 😉) and all the work getting it ready, is no joke!
What This Moment Actually Is
Here’s the thing I want to sit with, though, because it’s easy to read that story as a logistical problem that got solved and move on.
It’s more than that though.
What just happened is that our multigenerational household, the one that has functioned as a team for years — hit a life-stage inflection point. All at once, multiple people shifted. My son leveled up. My dad’s health changed. The yard is way too much for my mom and Jim and I absorbed more with other projects. The system that worked for the last several years, stopped, and the home still needed to function.
This is what I mean when I talk about designing for life stages before they arrive. Not just in the physical sense of wider doorways, zero-threshold showers, the blocking in walls for grab bars a parent doesn’t need yet but in the operational sense.
Multigenerational households are living systems. They flex. They shift. The version of your family that moves in together is not the version that will still be living there in five years. Or three. Or sometimes one.
I know this full well after living with my grandparents (when we were four generations under one roof) totally thrive and then one day, like a switch, they weren’t. It’s a really weird feeling.🫤
The question I ask in Section 1 of the Compound Planning Guide is this: what life stage are you designing for?
Most people answer based on today. Dad is healthy today. My son is home today. Everyone is available, capable, and willing today. So they design for today. 🤷♀️
But you’re not building today’s family. You’re building a structure and a system that has to hold up across versions of your family you haven’t met yet. The version where Dad’s heart changes things. The version where the kids are gone. The version where Jim and I are the ones running out of bandwidth.
That version shows up. Every single time. You can’t escape it!
The System Didn’t Break. It Flexed.
And here’s what I actually want you to hear, because I think this part matters:
We didn’t scramble. Nobody argued about who was going to cover what (well maybe there was a little stress 😂). Nobody held a family meeting or made a new chart or sent a pointed text about dropped responsibility.
We looked at the situation, saw that the old rhythm wasn’t going to work this season, and we adjusted. We hired our family friend (his company is Boots On The Ground btw so if you are local, look him up!). Problem solved. Life continued!
He does the best edging!
If you’re in a multigenerational household right now and you’re feeling the shift — an aging parent, a kid who’s finally launched, roles that used to be filled that aren’t anymorem you’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it realistically. Life stages move. Your household system needs to move with them.
If you’re planning a multigenerational home or compound and want to design for every version of your family, not just the current one, the Compound Planning Guide is a good place to start. It’s $47 and it covers the questions most people don’t think to ask until they’re already mid-transition. Grab the guide here.
P.S. We’re in the middle of selling this multigenerational home and building the next one. If you missed that post, it’s worth a read. 😉
Meet Jessica
What started as a hobby, Jessica’s blog now has millions of people visit yearly and while many of the projects and posts look and sound perfect, life hasn’t always been easy. Read Jessica’s story and how overcoming death, divorce and dementia was one of her biggest life lessons to date.