"Great Idea, We Thought...": 26 Things People Didn't Realize They Would Hate About Their Homes Until After They Moved In
Whether you rent or own your home, there's probably something about it that's not quite ideal — and all too often, we don't notice these little annoyances until after we move in. Recently, u/itspolkadotsocks asked people on Reddit to share the one thing about their home that didn't bug them until they had to live with it, and the responses were eye-opening. Here's what people had to say:
1."A flock of turkeys will encircle my car when I pull in the driveway on a semi-regular basis. They are decently aggressive, and the only thing that I found to work is to repeatedly open an umbrella in their faces and continue to scare them until they jump off the cliff next to my driveway. This sounds made up, but it is my life."
2."Open concept! I thought I would love it, but now I would kill for a separate kitchen area. It makes our house feel like an apartment."
3."The hood over the stove that doesn't vent outside in an otherwise good, functional kitchen. WHY DO PEOPLE TAKE THIS SHORTCUT (especially since in this house you can see where the old one vented out)???"
4."The only bathroom in the house is in the basement. I have to go from the top of the house to the bottom at night just to pee!"
5."We bought a 1952-built house in 2020. The door from the house to the garage was a normal-looking door but 2/3 sized. It made exiting from the house to the garage (where the clothes washer and dryer were installed) a challenge with a laundry basket in your hands. Why 2/3 sized? Never could figure out why. When we remodeled the kitchen in 2021, we had the contractor replace it with a regular, human-sized door."
6."The house is on a hill, so the front yard is very sloped and harder to mow and has drainage issues due to underground water. This makes our driveway steep and curved. I didn't realize how much of a pain all of this would be. Box trucks can't get into the driveway for deliveries or repairs; smaller trucks come in the driveway and can't back out properly without trashing the turf on either side of the driveway. I feel like I spend my life fixing the lawn."
7."Our living room is one step down from the kitchen. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. I can't tell you how many times my kids have tripped up/down that one step."
8."We remodeled our kitchen years ago and installed a fancy Delta Touch faucet. Great idea, we thought! The ability to turn the faucet on with your chin or with the back of your raw chicken-handling hand seemed like it would be a luxury. It's not. It works about 95% of the time, which sounds like a lot, but means every 10 times you use the sink (to turn either on or off), it doesn't work, and you have to touch it again. It's not quite as bad as the hands-free faucets in public bathrooms, but it's not that much better. But the worst part about it is that it looks like a normal faucet, so it confuses the hell out of guests who try to use it. Touch the handle and push it forward to turn on the water. The faucet turns on and immediately turns off. So they try again and again and wonder what the fuck is wrong with our faucet."
9."We have a Jack and Jill bathroom that connects the kids' rooms, and I absolutely hate it. They are younger (4 and 8), so they sneak through it at night and don’t sleep, and the worst part is we don’t even notice until we hear giggling at midnight. Plus, if one goes to the bathroom, it wakes the other one up because they don’t like to close the doors, and the light wakes them. This is way worse when one is sick and in and out of the bathroom. Usually, I take them to the spare room when this happens because it’s easier to have only one up, not two kids."
10."Not my current home, but I moved in somewhere that only had one drawer in the kitchen. I didn't realize when viewing, it because who counts drawers? Anyway, it was super inconvenient, and since then, when looking at our current home, we checked the number of drawers!"
11."Two bedrooms have light switches on the wall on the side where the door hinges are. Just inconveniently placed, but we can’t switch the doors because of room configuration, so we’d have to pay probably hundreds of dollars to have the light switches moved just to satisfy that bit of inconvenience."
12."A bathroom without a window. I will never again entertain a bathroom with no natural ventilation or light."
13."The previous owner put a skylight in the master bedroom. It's not even in the center of the room; it's off-centered from the door, and the placement makes zero sense. It brings in way too much sunlight in the morning, making sleeping in next to impossible unless it's covered. It's a pain in the ass to cover, and I just hate it. It's an ongoing joke in the household. The previous owner went on and on and on about he was the first on the block with a skylight and how much value it added to the house. It doesn't, it's stupid."
14."Last house my parents built, the garage was directly under my bedroom (which is on the second floor. SO NICE to have someone open then close this LOUD door when I'm trying to sleep late. Then come back and open and close it again."
15."The stairs have a 90° turn so they can fit in a compact area, and we can’t get anything but flat-pack furniture up to the second floor. Didn’t realize until I moved in."
16."Our house faces directly West and if you have to use the front door in the warmer months, you’ll literally burn your hand on the door handle. If anyone has any suggestions on how to address this problem, I’d love to know. I was wondering if I should rig up some sort of pot holder material onto the handle. It’s one of those handles you have to click down with your thumb to open the door."
17."Not enough storage space. Closets are way more important than I realized."
18."Surprising crappy-ness in our rental includes the commode that was installed just crooked enough that we take a chance placing anything on the tank because it slides off. And the bathroom sink has dips/soap wells where water accumulates daily."
19."Small white tiles in the bathroom. The grout gets disgusting, and to hand clean that many small little sections of grout is horribly tedious. I put a grout sealant on it after I scrubbed it last time, and it’s still gross again."
20."There's a playground behind my house. I didn't realize how much children sound like they're being tortured when they play."
21."We do not have a single storage closet besides in the bedrooms. Having to go to the basement every time you need a broom gets really old."
22."For us, it’s having only street parking. It’s never an issue until winter when the snow plows literally bury our cars under 3…4…5 feet of snow. Ugh."
23."I live in a 100-year-old house that had a guest powder room created out of an old service staircase. It’s on an exterior wall. It has a window. But they didn’t put in a fan. You really don’t know just how important bathroom fans are until you don’t have one."
24."I hate that my washer and dryer are in my basement. I have to carry loads up and down creepy, dark stairs every day. I wish I had them upstairs! It’s especially hard when I’m heavily pregnant."
25."The doors to every room are like 1.5 inches above the floor, so sound travels into the bedrooms."
26."The toilet in my bathroom is one of those extra-tall ones. I am very short."
Is there something annoying about your home that you didn't notice until you'd already moved in? Tell us about it in the comments!