| This is my experience as well. Maintenance of the house and the property is a huge time sink, but the worst offender is the distance to everything and how you need a car. Driving around constantly in suburbia is absolutely maddening. Oh and the car needs maintenance too. Changing tires, service appointments, keeping it clean, shovelling snow so you can get to the store. We sold the house and moved to an apartment in the city last year. Now I have time to hang out with my family, we have all these restaurants and things to do everywhere. Got rid of the car and I bike to work. My maintenance now is pretty much: - Mow collectively owned lawn once per summer - Spring and autumn cleaning of collectively owned spaces. One or two chores. Last autumn I cleaned a carpet. This spring I cleaned two bathrooms and checked the fire alarm batteries. Then each time we had a barbecue after the chores. - Service bicycles when needed - Make sure food isn't rotting in the fridge Oh and I have time for hobbies too. My kids have way more friends now (playgrounds are really spread out in the suburbs and they are mostly empty) and the area we moved to is a lot calmer than in the suburbs where teenagers would roam around and be loud because there was nothing else to do. We might get something like a summer home to be close to nature when it's nice to be (currently we rent a cabin for a few weeks in the summer) but just everyday living is so much better in an urban environment. For context we live in Europe. |