How To Manage A Large Family

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[00:00:00] Gloria from Yellow Llama Co.: Welcome to Sentimental Simmer, a podcast made for emotionally attached simmers and storytellers with wild imaginations. I’m your host, Gloria, and I run Yellow Llama Co., a planner shop made to help simmers play with purpose. Every week, I talk all about things, sim life planning, storytelling, and memory keeping. I’ll also brainstorm new ways to obsess over our pixel people, whether they be in the Sims or another live sim game. And now let’s get into it.

Gloria [00:00:35]:

In today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about how to manage a large legacy family and keep from being overwhelmed. In the last episode, we found a partner for our founder. In the meantime, they’ve grown from a 2 person household to 8. That can happen quicker than you think in the Sims. Growing a big legacy family is the dream until it isn’t. It’s not easy managing a big household. I get cold sweats already when my sims have pets, let alone when I got a bunch of kids to take care of and make sure the parents are still making ends meet. I have a family that I’m currently playing in the Sims 4 where I was grateful that burning belly disease took the dad and one of the sons because the 7 sim household was getting a bit too much. I like to play with aging on because

Gloria [00:01:13]:

it makes it feel like every moment counts, But the FOMO starts to get strong once I can only focus on so many sims in that time. It can really become overwhelming when you have so many sims doing so many things, And it’s just really hard to keep track of them all, which is also something I like to do. I like to keep memories and and keep tabs on every sim. But But when he has such a large household, it really can become overwhelming. Sure. There tends to be a main character, you know, usually the main the heir or the founder, but I I also get attached to the spares. So how can you manage a large legacy family and keep from being overwhelmed? I think it can help if you play family members in rotation. So for example, you could focus on mom for a

Gloria [00:01:55]:

couple of days, And then you could focus on kid 1 on a couple days later and then kid 2. So you’re basically always cycling through the sims you’re focusing on, but you let the other sims live in full autonomy. So they’re taking care of themselves. They’re going to school. They’re going to work and all that good stuff, but you’re actually actively playing only 1 sim. That way you can focus fully on whatever goals they might have. For example, going back to that family plane in Sims 4 where, you know, they lost a couple, to burning belly disease. I have a teenage girl. She used to be a werewolf. Not anymore because that was also, like, too much work because she kept getting angry and kept, like, going all haywire. So So I’m going into a rage, but she is normal now, and she just got

Gloria [00:02:36]:

a boyfriend. So, you know, I like to focus on her building a relationship and being good at high school as well. And then We’ve got, her brother who also is in a relationship with somebody out of town, and so that’s also something to manage because They he always has to travel. And then we’ve got, a smaller kid who is a she’s a girl scout, And so she’s busy with that and working on her skills and being adventurous. And then we have the mom who’s a bit scandalous. And just now, not too long ago, married her, one of her a guy she used to have an affair with, but then her husband died to burn belly disease, paved the way free so that she can move on to that affair. And now they have a newborn infant that she has to take care of, so that’s

Gloria [00:03:19]:

also a lot of work. And then, obviously, I want to focus on the infant, make sure that they’re, you know, growing well, Skilling up and all that stuff. So and the dad also maybe has some hobbies and some skills. So it can get quite a lot. Somehow, when his family managed to still grow even more and become even more overwhelming than before the brain and belly disease got them. Focusing for a day or 2 only on 1 of them at a time, that really helps. You might also find that you run out of space quickly the quicker your family grows. You can maximize space with bunk beds or murphy bed. That’s a great way to Utilize space that’s still small because your family, your founder’s probably gonna move into a starter home or anything that you can afford. Maybe you’re playing a legacy challenge where

Gloria [00:04:01]:

they have to just move into an empty So you don’t really start out with much, but if the family’s growing, you have more Sims that need shelter, then, yeah, it can start getting tough. You can really try to use the space you have By fitting in more things with smaller items or items that are just made for multiple sims, you can, of course, build onto the home. Or if, you know, you’re not much of a builder, Don’t be afraid to move, you know, into a new home or, you know, replace the home on the same lot. But careful not to go too big too soon. The new home could actually end up being overwhelming in its own right. My legacy family started actually in Brindleton Bay with this little cottage. I kept building on it a little bit here and there to add rooms for

Gloria [00:04:39]:

kids, but it really was too small at some point, so they moved into a large cottage estate in Henford on Bagley. And this this place was huge. It had 2 floors. It had even a separate quarter where the teen lived and a huge garden and and a little, what do you call it? A shed for the cow. It was great. Like, it had chickens and everything. It was huge. But I ended up always having to go on a manhunt to find my sims because it had just had, Like, too many nooks and crannies, and it was also 2 stories. It was charming at first, but, essentially, it wasn’t too functional. So I had to move them move out. They’re actually renting out the home to other Sims. I moved them, to a new second story home in Willow Creek. It was still kind of overwhelming

Gloria [00:05:20]:

because I had to now furnish this new home. But I had I was able to furnish it in my own way, and it had a very traditional, easy to navigate layout, which helped. Sometimes the most fancy, charming builds aren’t the easiest ones to really work with when you’re playing the game. Also one tip, If you can, try to keep your home one story. It’ll just help you keep that overview and always know where your sims are at any point in time. This could also mean less landscaping space for outdoor activities, but I think you can always find space for, like, a playground, which is, you know, important for the kids. Speaking of kids, they need care. And I feel like next to pets, children can be the most strenuous part of having a large household. Like, even if you have, I don’t know, 5 sims

Gloria [00:06:05]:

and they’re all adults and young adults, that can still be easier than having kids because kids tend to need a little bit more help, especially if you get infants. And so you can just skip it altogether and send them to boarding school, for example. On the Sims 3, I know for sure you can do that. I don’t know if you can do that. in the Sims for perhaps with mods. You could also cap your families at 1 to 2 kids and just say, oh, you know what? Categorically, we’re not gonna have more than 2 kids because that’s just overwhelming. That’ll also keep further generations also from being too overwhelming because the more kids you have, that means even more offspring. It’s kind of like It grows exponentially. Whereas if you say, okay. We’re gonna just only do 1 kid each generation, then, yeah, it just

Gloria [00:06:46]:

keeps The overview more there. You could also help carry the load by keeping any aunties and uncles or grandmas in the household so they can also help out with taking care of infants and taking care of children. There’s also a reason why maybe you shouldn’t move out your elders right when they, you know, grow old, or you can have them, you know, be nearby in a neighborhood home so that they can also, you know, carry some slack. You could also hire a full time nanny with the better nanny mod from little miss Sam. I’ve done this countless times because sometimes I just can’t be bothered with taking care of the kids. So I just hire the nanny, and then you can even have her be there full time, like, live in nanny, and that’s just fantastic. Another thing I recommend is just cutting off the

Gloria [00:07:27]:

tedium. Like, I know Like, ever since the Sims 2, you know, the whole grind thing has not been the focus anymore of the game. It’s more about the narrative and the storytelling and and the memories you make. And so while it can be fun to play for the grind if, you know, you just like going for achievements and things like that. If you do care more about the storytelling aspect of the game, just try cutting out Cutting some corners and try, you know, removing some of the boring bits so that you can focus on, you know, the actual lives of your sims. So I think at a minimum, playing with full autonomy on is a must, and you can also avoid micromanaging. So instead of sending your your sims to the toilet or getting a full mouth rest, you can cheat. I definitely recommend the

Gloria [00:08:15]:

UI Cheat Extension mod by, where you can just, you know, drag out motives on the fly. So you might not always wanna cheat things up because I think for realism, it is actually nice if this sim actually goes to sleep and sleeps for the full night. And so you could actually cheat for that. Like, if we’re micromanaging, we can micromanage realism so you could maybe make the sleep, motive go down so they actually go to bed and then make things go up if you just don’t wanna bother going to toilet or feeding them and things like that. You could also hire a maid or a butler so that they don’t have to bother with cleaning their space. You know? Because it’s already stressful enough because they have to take care of the kids, but if they also have to Take care of a household that

Gloria [00:08:53]:

can be a lot. You can also take advantage of satisfaction rewards. If you don’t want to go the cheating route and you do want to kinda, like, at least Earn the right to not go to the bathroom or not have to go to sleep. There are rewards that slow the, Decay of needs. So there’s a butter of steal reward, instant hygiene, speed cleaner, night owl. So those can be helpful, and it it’ll help you maybe Have to micromanage less, but at the same time, feel like you’ve earned those bonuses. Just now introduced with the for rent pack, You can also play multiple families in rotation on 1 single lot, which I think is a game changer. So You could have a multi generational home lot, so a residential rental where you have multiple families on one lot, basically. So you can Also, alternatively, if you

Gloria [00:09:46]:

don’t have the expansion pack, you can keep all, Sims from the family in 1 neighborhood so it’s easier to visit each other because, You know, it’s not just 1 big household that can be difficult to manage somewhere down the line. It’s gonna be the entire family itself, like the legacy. You have for example, if you didn’t stop at 1 kid, you didn’t have that limitation, you’ll have, in generation 2, let’s say, maybe Three family units that stem from that same legacy, and one of them is where your main character, your heir is, but the others are their siblings that have their own families and their own rights. And so you’re gonna have to also manage that. And so I think it’s useful if you have them all in the same lot or at least in this in vicinity of each other. So you have, like,

Gloria [00:10:27]:

an overview, because I have a save with, like a farmer family. And they moved into this really great custom world called Meadow Glen, and they filled it up pretty quickly. And, yeah, it was just I just felt like I was missing out because I couldn’t play with them all, and they had so many things going on in each in their own right. And so I feel like That would have been great also to have in Sims 3 the option to have a multi generational lot where you can have multiple units and just have the whole, like the entire family there because you can do that, of course, with the family home in itself, but you can only have up to 8 Sims in there, and, obviously, the family’s gonna grow. So growing a big family It’s eating the Sims, but taking care of them is

Gloria [00:11:07]:

another story, but I think it’s all part of the fun. You can adjust your play style to accommodate for the growing household by playing in Rotation, you know, or thanks to their For Rent expansion pack, you can keep the family close and units on the same lot. And you can also design the house to accommodate for the growing family by maximizing your space. You can, either with mods or with in game support, Have, you know, NPCs help your family out with childcare or keeping the keeping the place clean. And you could also just use cheats to cut out the tedium and just make things easier on yourself so that you can focus on what you really care about. And that is, you know, moving your sim’s life forward, which You’ll have more time for that if you just, you know, cut out the boring bits

Gloria [00:11:53]:

with some cheats or with some, satisfaction rewards. If you have more ideas or wanna just brainstorm together on how otherwise you can manage a big family, I very much welcome you to join our Cozy community on a heartbeat called the llama club where we love to share each other’s stories and inspiration on how to play the game. In the next episode, we’re gonna be talking about what to do with the spares of your legacy family. Until then, Happy Simming!