What Is a Multigenerational Home? How to Prepare for an Elderly Parent Moving In

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there are 6 million multigenerational homes with three or more generations living under one roof. 

And while the rates of multigenerational homes were low in the 1980s, multigenerational living has been on the rise decade after decade since then.

Economic influences like shrinkflation and the rising cost of living obviously have a lot to do with it.

But the AARP cites other interesting contributors, such as aging parents or adult children preferring multigenerational living situations to other elderly options. Or multigenerational immigrant family members, sometimes simply preferring to stay together based on cultural traditions, other times due to not having access to alternative options based on documentation status or sociological barriers. 

Regardless of why, it’s no secret that transitioning to a multigenerational home requires storage hacks for sharing space.

But before we get into strategy, just exactly what is a multigenerational home?

This helpful guide will explain what living in a multigenerational home means. We’ll also dive into the benefits and challenges a multigenerational home presents, and how to prepare for an elderly parent moving in. 

We’ll share some small space living tips, and explain how SelfStorage.com can help you find the ideal storage solutions for maintaining personal space and keeping your belongings accessible while also private and protected.

What Is a Multigenerational Home? 

A multigenerational home is a home occupied by three different generations. Multigenerational living is often assumed to imply that members of each of the generations are related, but that’s not always the case. The term has also been applied when roommates, close friends, or extended family members of different generations shared responsibilities, living space, and housing costs.

Some of the more popular catalysts that lead to multi-generational housing include adult children returning home due to housing market factors or aging parents moving in with adult children.

In addition to the obvious cost savings on child care and rent, multigenerational living lowers the level of loneliness and heightens the health and well-being of older adults. It also leads to stronger educational results for kids who have mentors available to guide them.

Multi-generational housing situations also require a multigenerational design update that accommodates differing lifestyles. You may need a walk-in shower, wheelchair accessible entrances, and a dedicated space for kids to run free and play with their toys.

Multi-generational housing also requires a healthy balance between shared communal living spaces for cooking, dining, and socializing, and private places for sleeping, relaxing, and intimacy with partners.

Before we move on to how to prepare your home for an elderly parent moving in, let’s take a more in-depth look at the benefits and challenges of living in a multigenerational home.

The Pros And Cons of Multigenerational Living

Just like anything else, an intergenerational housing presents you with some unique opportunities. But living within your intergenerational relationships full-time also comes with some challenges. Familiarizing yourself with the pros and cons of multigenerational living ahead of time can help you mentally and emotionally prepare for these upcoming changes.

Benefits of Living in a Multigenerational Home

Shared Living Expenses

The most obvious benefit of multigenerational living is the lowered cost of living and housing cost savings. Having multiple family members splitting the cost of rent benefits both older family members living on a fixed income, students, and younger members just entering the workforce via entry-level jobs.

Reduces the Cost Of Child Care

Living in a multigenerational home also benefits you with free child care, thanks to having retired adults living under the same roof. Elder family members tend to appreciate having a role in child care, and this frees up the parents to work without having to pay for daycare or child sitters.

Enhanced Family Bonds

It’s not just the cost of child care that multigenerational living optimizes, but also the bond between family members. With grandkids spending more time with the grandparents and not just mom and dad, the kids can develop more dynamic relational and emotional capacities. 

Feeling a deep family bond and support system also helps children feel like they have creative control and agency, as their hobbies and social life aren’t restricted by their parents’ work schedules.

Improved Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being

With older family members feeling like they have value and are of service, and the younger generation feeling helped by a constant emotional support structure,  there’s a sense of reciprocity between the generations. 

The reciprocal and dynamic relationships with these strengthened family bonds can enhance the mental health of everyone in the family system. And this emotional support does more than just fill the void of isolation and carry you through the hard times. It also gives everyone in he family someone to celebrate their victories with.

Shared Responsibilities

Rather than a burden, with one or two family members managing and caretaking the rest, look at the situation like a blessing where everyone can chip in. It’s true that everyone might not be able to take care of manual labor and lawn care. But chores like cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking can all be evenly divided to make up the difference in time. 

For example, seniors with mobility challenges may have access to a transportation service they can use to run certain errands while they’re at work.  Create a shared calendar that has an errand and chore schedule, taking into consideration everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. Update and optimize the calendars as people’s schedules and capacities change.

Increased Life Expectancy 

A survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health revealed that family members who share a multigenerational home tend to live longer. There are obviously health and genetic factors, but overall, healthy individuals engaged in multigenerational living have a higher life expectancy and a lower rate of premature passing. There are likely lots of contributing factors, but the increased physical and emotional support and companionship probably have a lot to do with it.

Pooling Healthcare Resources

Family members living in a multigenerational home are able to pool their health resources. Beyond just pitching it for healthcare expenses, sharing healthcare resources also includes cross-utilizing certain medical equipment, so you’re not having to buy multiples. Scheduling coordinated doctor visits lowers the cost of transportation and consolidates the appointments to keep the rest of your schedule clear.  

Challenges of Living in a Multigenerational Home

Overcrowded With Stuff

Whether it’s intergenerational housing or a multi-family home, having this many people, all with their own belongings, can fill up space quickly. Even houses with attics, basements, and garages can quickly become storage spaces rather than living spaces.

An off-site storage solution, like a nearby storage unit, can help keep this common concern with multigenerational living in check.

Lack Of Privacy And Personal Space

Another challenge when you’re living in a multigenerational home is privacy and personal space. It’s one thing to coordinate family meals so you don’t have four people cooking personal meals all in the same kitchen. It’s another when you have to get ready for work or school, and there are three people ahead of you to use the bathroom.

In a smaller home, it can be hard to find a quiet corner to read, do homework, or be creative. 

Pro tip: You can turn a storage unit into an office space for a nominal monthly rental fee–much more affordable and low maintenance than adding a study onto your house.

Harmonizing Common Area Activities

Your spouse may prefer to watch sports while you want to catch up on your favorite drama series. Meanwhile, Grandma wants to share her favorite Ingrid Bergman film with the family. But the older kids want to play video games while the younger kids want to watch Cars 17.

Sunday afternoon TV time is just one example of how it can be hard to balance family dynamics and common space activities when you’re living in a multigenerational home of a modest size.
You can counteract this disharmony by using a shared calendar to evenly divide control of the common space activities among the family.

Other solutions include multiple TVs across the different bedrooms or setting up a second common area.

Differing Ethics, Beliefs, and Values

We could easily put this item in the benefits section, since there are lots of pros to multigenerational cohabiting under the same roof. For example, the older generation can teach the younger kids native languages, family recipes, and cultural stories and traditions that tend to get lost during emigration. 

But the differing ethics, beliefs, and values also present your family dynamics with some obvious challenges. For example, younger family members may bring home friends from different lifestyles and backgrounds that are unfamiliar to the older generations. This can lead to miscommunications, disagreements, and offensive communication. 

Maintaining harmony requires constant communication, gentle conflict resolution strategies, critical self-evaluation, and giving each other space for self-determination without resorting to disrespectful or hostile communication.

Preparing Your Home for Multigenerational Living

Understanding how to prepare for an elderly parent moving in starts with adjusting the physical space. Multigenerational design employs a healthy balance between shared living spaces and private bedrooms or study areas.

Kitchen access needs to be implemented so that everyone can nourish themselves. And bathroom adjustments may need to happen so that getting out the door on time in the mornings is realistic.

This section explores some specific home renovations to consider before your home becomes multigenerational.

Natural Lighting

Employing natural lighting strategies in shared spaces can help them feel more spacious and open. For example, if you’re house has multiple separate entrances, consider at least one set of sliding glass doors in a communal room.

Installing some sliding glass doors that let the sunlight in is a simple way to feel less crowded in the communal space.

Pro Tip: You can add a covered patio or screened sun room on the other side of the sliding doors. When the weather is nice, open the door, and it’ll feel like the room just expanded. This also provides separate entrances and exits for family members who need some space to come and go without attracting attention.

Soundproofing Bedrooms, Offices, Studios, and Studies

Multigenerational design strategies often employ soundproofing in all the rooms that family members use for private activities and personal space. This gives the kids chasing each other around in the next room space to be kids, and the adults space to read, relax, or be creative without distraction.

There are lots of soundproofing room framing products available. Some of the more affordable soundproofing techniques used in multigenerational designs can include:

• Seal Gaps: Use caulk or weather stripping around your windows and doors to keep sound from sneaking in.
• Acoustic Panels: Stick some sound-absorbing panels on your walls to cut down on echo and keep noise from bleeding through.
• Soundproof Curtains: Hang up some soundproof curtains to block out street noise and dampen sounds in your space.
• Mass-Loaded Vinyl (MLV): Add MLV to your walls and ceiling to block noise from entering.
• Soundproof Blankets: Throw some sound-absorbing blankets over your door and windows.

Fluid Floor Plans

Multigenerational designs often utilize fluid or flexible floor planning. Flexible floor plans let you rearrange the rooms for multiple purposes as the family’s needs shift and evolve.

We already talked at length about the fluid family dynamics and relationship roles that are present under the same roof in a multigenerational home. If your floor plans are as dynamic as the values and interests of the members of your family system, you can adapt and adjust based on the situation.

Private Living Suites

If you have the resources to add on bedrooms so that every single person and couple within the family has their own private space to retreat to, go for it. It’s a bonus if you can install separate entrances into the private spaces from outside.

If that’s not an option, consider adding some trailers or tiny homes in the backyard. You can find some easy casita floor plans online, or have a tiny home or yurt shipped right to your doorstep.

If the indoor and outdoor spaces are limited, try dedicating some space to a chill-out room where a family member who needs some space can go to relax. You may have to schedule blocks of time so everyone gets a fair turn.

Accessibility Features

Your elderly family members will eventually need some enhanced accessibility features, especially if you’re doing something like converting your basement to an in-law suite.

Important accessibility add-ons to consider include:

• Grab Bars
• Wheel-Chair Ramps
• Wider Doorways
• Sit-Down/Walk-in Showers
• Walk-In Closets
• Stair Lifts

Decluttering Before Elderly Parents Move In

We suggest decluttering the space before you add more people and their belongings to the mix. Decluttering can seem intimidating, but once you get moving, it actually gets fun. And the liberation you feel afterwards is priceless.

We suggest the Keep, Donate, Sell, Toss method. Trust us when we say it really works. Here’s how to jump in:

1. Start with three or four large boxes or storage containers, labeling each of them: “Keep, Donate, Sell, Toss. If you don’t have time to secure some large boxes, just dedicate four spaces on the ground, each large enough for a pile–use a piece of paper to label each one so you don’t get them confused when you’re in the flow.
2. Items you actually use, need, or love go in the keep box or pile. Once you’re all done, you’ll find a new home for them, keep items that save space, and put them out of the way.
3. Things in decent shape that you don’t need anymore, but that someone else could use, go in the donate box. As soon as you’re done, you take this box–or if it’s a pile, shove it in trash bags–and transport these items straight to a thrift store, donation, or charity center. Some charity organizations will even pick the items up from your home.
4. Anything you think is valuable but that you know you don’t really use goes in the sell pile. These items are worth the hassle of selling online or staging a garage sale. We suggest you list or schedule your sale items as soon as you finish the declutter, so they don’t sit around.  The golden rule is to take photos and list your sell pile online within 48 hours of decluttering.
5. Damaged, broken, worn-out, or trash items that nobody wants or needs get thrown into the trash pile. And you guessed it—as soon as you’re done, throw the trash pile in a dumpster. Some people prefer to keep recyclable and trash items separate, which requires a fifth box or pile. Follow your conscience.

How to Use Self-Storage To Prepare Your Home for Multigenerational Living

Self-storage is a helpful tool during any home renovation project, and prepping for an elderly parent or two to move in is no different.  First, decide which size storage unit you might need by examining the room you’re redoing.

• For example, home offices probably only hold a bookshelf, a desk, and an end table. A 5×10 is probably plenty of space. 
• But larger rooms, such as a master bedroom, living room, den, or kitchen, a larger 10×10 or 10×20 would be better.
• Check out our helpful storage size guide to see some storage unit floor plans and visual guides that make choosing the right-sized unit a bit easier.

Depending on what you’re storing, you might want a unit with strong security features like electronic gate access, video surveillance, and on-site security or management.

And if you live in an area with extreme seasonal weather, we suggest renting a unit with climate control. Climate-controlled storage maintains an indoor temperature between 50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a constant humidity level year-round to protect weather-sensitive materials such as leather, wood, and electronics.

Last but not least, you might consider drive-up access. This feature allows you to park your car, truck, or trailer directly up to the storage unit, streamlining the process of loading and unloading large items.

How to Prepare for an Elderly Parent Moving In Mentally and Emotionally

Now that you understand the physical process of prepping your home for your elderly parents, let’s consider the mental and emotional preparations you can make to ease the transition, both for you and them. 

First, have an honest, heart-to-heart conversation with your parents. 

• Explain your expectations and your boundaries with them so they don’t feel caught off guard.
  • For example, you might want to let them know your hobbies, availability, and mental, physical, and social routines, and how much alone time is important to every member of the household. 
  • This is also a good time to address any childcare expectations you have of them.
• Ask them about their expectations and boundaries, and make an honest attempt to understand their needs and preferences. 
• Invite the younger family members to participate in the conversation as well, giving them the freedom to voice their opinions and concerns and preparing your elderly parents to listen. 

Next, examine their medical and healthcare needs honestly. This starts with considering their healthcare providers, how near or far they are from your house, and what the realistic transportation options and schedules are. Talk about medication management, and be sure to address the danger of having open and visible medication around children. 

The healthcare conversation is a great place to address any mobility and accessibility changes you plan on making, and to let them know what changes you’re unable to make due to any financial or spatial limitations. We also suggest some emergency planning at this stage in the conversation, ensuring everyone is on the same page. 

Once you’ve gotten through the medical and healthcare conversation, it’s time to talk about legal and financial planning and budgeting. If they’re retired, they’re likely on a fixed income. If you need them to pitch in toward rent and the increased spending on utilities and groceries that inevitably comes with increasing the size of your household, be straight up with them about it. 

It’s also important to talk honestly and openly about difficult realities you’ve yet to discuss,  like estate planning, healthcare, hospice intentions, and power of attorney. 

We also recommend acknowledging the emotional preparation these changes require from all parties involved. Call the adjustment period out and mention any hopes and fears you’re currently wrestling with about the situation. 

Mention your intentions of preserving your parents’ dignity and independence while finding a balance where they can contribute to the household and feel empowered. 

Last but not least, you should address all the decluttering and downsizing you’ve done or plan to do in preparation. Acknowledge that your parents will probably have to downsize their belongings before they move in, and offer to help your aging parents downsize so they don’t feel alone or overwhelmed. 

Again, sharing a storage unit can be a great tool to ease the transition and help with downsizing your and your parents’ belongings. If you’ve been following our advice, you have already decluttered all your belongings when you were making the physical preparations. 

Well, now you’ll have to do the same for your parents, guiding them through the Keep, Sell, Donate, Trash process we outlined earlier. 

You may realize that the items you decided to keep won’t fit with all your parents’ items, or that there are things both you and your parents don’t use that neither of you is ready to let go of. 

That’s where the storage unit comes in. 

Booking a storage unit near you gives you the added space at home without requiring you or your parents to let go of sentimental items. 

Strategies for Managing Belongings and Downsizing After Your Parents Have Moved In

Once you’ve adjusted the physical space and mentally and emotionally prepared for this huge lifestyle shift, it’s time to ease into the management phase. Combining households can make keeping up with cleanliness and maintenance a challenge. 

You’ll have to constantly be shuffling through the keep, donate, sell, trash cycles as you discover moe and more stuff piling up in your space. 

Remember, downsizing your home isn’t a one-and-done process. It requires routine maintenance. Getting organized and downsizing your belongings is the first step. Staying organized requires a whole different set of strategies:

• The “one in, one out” rule: For every new thing that comes home, you get rid of something else. Ideally, you’re getting rid of a similar item. So if you buy a new winter jacket, you choose an old jacket to get rid of. The same goes for a pair of shoes, a board game, a new frying pan, etc.
• Digitizing documents and photos: Scan any important documents, kids’ artwork, letters, and photos to cut down on paper storage. You can store these items on cloud storage and give the whole family access so they can view them on their respective devices whenever they want. 
• Weekly maintenance: High-traffic areas like kitchen counters, entryway tables, shoe piles, and bedroom surfaces typically require a weekly decluttering session. You can assign each of the spaces ot a different family member to prevent one person from defaulting as the cleaning person.
• Seasonal rotations and maintenance: Keep your skis in your storage unit in the summertime when you’re camping and hiking, and then swap your ski gear out for your hiking and camping gear once winter comes. And every few months,  do a quick walk-through and reassess. Get rid of anything you haven’t used in a year.

Renting a self-storage facility can help employ these maintenance and downsizing strategies without having to part with your sentimental stuff:

• Decluttering: Downsizing to a smaller living space or decluttering the amount of stuff you keep at your current home are both opportunities to rent a storage unit long-term.
• Seasonal Storage: Whether it’s Halloween decorations, snowmobiles, and ski gear in the summer or motorcycle and patio furniture in the winter, establishing a seasonal rotation is a great way to downsize your home without losing your seasonal gear and decorations. 
• Moving: A storage unit can hold you and your parents’ packed belongings and keep them safe and out of the way for the upcoming move, allowing you to start prepping early.
• Sentimental items, Family Heirlooms, and Collectables: A storage unit is a great place to keep sentimental items that your elderly parents aren’t ready to part with while saving space at home. Set up shelves and use plastic storage bins and bubble wrap to keep delicate items safe. 
• Home Renovations: If you’re making some accessibility changes, you might need to store furniture and appliances in a storage unit for a few weeks while the construction crew renovates the bedroom, living room, or repaints. 
• Vehicle Storage: If you’d rather keep your parents’ personal stuff at the garage at home, you can find car storage to free your garage space from your tools, project cars, dirt bikes, and ATVs, or your motorcycle during winter.
• Long-Term Vs. Short-Term Storage: If you only need a storage unit to ease the transition, to help pack and prep for the move, or to keep furniture during a renovation, you can find a short-term storage unit that only requires a three-month lease. Some short-term units are month-to-month, which is even less of a commitment. That said, if you’re planning to keep sentimental items and antique furniture you don’t use but aren’t ready to part with, long-term storage units are beneficial because they guarantee an available unit and lock you into a cheaper price per square foot. 
• Climate Control vs. Non-Climate Control: Climate control regulates the temperature and humidity levels to keep your belongings safe. Reasons why you need climate control include living in a harsh winter or summer climate or in areas with high or low humidity. High humidity encourages mold and mildew growth, and a dry climate causes cracking, warping, and discoloration. But not all items are sensitive to weather-related damage. Here are a few items that ARE climate-sensitive:
  • Media and electronics
  • Valuable apparel:  Wood or leather furniture: Books:
  • Wine
  • Musical instruments
  • Glass, metal, and plastics

Making the Most of Your Space

Multigenerational living both requires and inspires lots of space-saving tricks. We’ll review a few of our favorite tricks to use, from organizing your living room to solving bedroom storage problems. 

For starters, you can mount your TV on the wall to free up floor space. We all know how much square footage an entertainment center and sound system can take up. A wall-mounted TV gives you room for more seating.

If you’re renting, you might not be able to make some of the space-saving renovations, like installing permanent shelves into the walls themselves. That said, you can use removable wall storage like tension rod systems, hooks, and leaning ladder shelves to take advantage of vertical storage space without damaging or altering the walls.

In your private area or bedroom, use floor-to-ceiling storage towers to take advantage of your room’s full height. These towers also make your ceiling look higher, adding to the psychological space you feel, even if it doesn’t add more space in physical reality. 

Hang some over-the-door organizers on the back of your closet door to turn forgotten and unseen spaces into storage for shoes, cleaning supplies, toys, electronics, or whatever else you can fit on them.

Here are a few of our favorite closet organization tips you can use to add clothes storage space to a small bedroom closet:

• Double-Rod Hanging Systems: Install a second rod below your primary one to double your closet’s hanging capacity. Use the upper rod for tops or jackets and the lower rod for pants or shorter items that don’t hang as low.
• Pull-Down Closet Rods: For high ceilings, pull-down rods turn hard-to-reach spaces into functional storage. Pull-down rods mount on hinges that let you pull the rod down for fast and easy access.
• Vertical Rod Extenders: These renter-friendly devices hook onto your existing rod and drop down a second level for pants, skirts, and kids’ clothes without requiring you to drill into the wall.
• Adjustable Shelving: Modular systems like Elfa or ClosetMaid let you update and optimize your shelf layout as needed. You can even add or remove shelves and switch between drawers and open space without any tools, drilling, or wall-mount installation required.
• Vertical Dividers: Vertical dividers can create structured closet zones for stacks of clothing, linens, or bags without risking your piles falling into one another and getting mixed up.

You can hang vertical dividers in group storage rooms like the garage, attic, or basement for privacy and to help you organize shared spaces so each generation in your multigenerational home gets their own personal storage area.

Successful Living in a Multigenerational Home

Once you have the layout, accessibility, chore schedule, medical, financial, belonging, and storage space aspects all worked out, it’s time to work out the kinks of actually living together successfully in a multigenerational home. 

As you may have guessed, it starts with agreeing on some boundaries and house rules.

We suggest you sit down as a family and agree on quiet hours, for example. You may decide that 9 pm to 7 am is no loud music, no loud TV, and no yelling and chatting. Another important decision is the shared space etiquette. You might decide that no one can leave clothes, books, toys, dirty dishes, or shoes in the shared space. 

Agree on clear boundaries about privacy expectations. Maybe the family decides that private bedrooms are off limits to everyone except the person who sleeps there. Guest policies are another important variable to get in front of. You might prefer to only have guests on the weekends, or for weeknight guests to be gone by dinner time.

Once house rules are established, the next critical step is to establish communication strategies. A family therapist or counselor can help you come up with conflict resolution strategies that respect and leave room for different communication styles. There are also some great resources online or in family psychology books at the public library. 

We suggest holding a monthly family meeting on a specific day of the month where you can openly discuss which rules are working and which aren’t working, and make adjustments and compromises accordingly. 

We discussed the importance of dividing chores, errands, financial contributions, and caregiving duties in a fair but realistic way. These routine family meetings are also the place to talk about anything that seems unfair or isn’t working, and do some fine-tuning as a group. 

Sharing your home with multiple generations is obviously going to require some compromise, but you want to do so by meeting the other family members halfway without anyone feeling like they’re losing their independence or sense of self. 

Family traditions are important, but they can also be updated to include everyone. And as crucial as family time is for bonding, it’s equally critical to schedule alone time for everyone. We all need to spend some time analyzing and actualizing ourselves in order to be there for others in our full capacity. 

Living in a Multigenerational Home: How SelfStorage.com Can Help You Prepare for an Elderly Parent Moving In

What is a multigenerational home? It’s more just a house with three different generations living in the same room. Multigenerational living is an opportunity to downsize, communicate boundaries, and strengthen family bonds. 

But remember, just like anything else, living in a multigenerational home takes skill, and the surest way to develop skill is practice. There are lots of psychological, sociological, and anthropological resources you can read that cover cross-generational communication.

It starts with balancing your willingness to connect with healthy boundaries that consider everyone’s needs.

Nothing lasts forever, and multigenerational living is no different. Rather than looking at the situation as a permanent bind you’re in, it might be helpful to reframe it as a temporary but evolutionary step in your personal growth journey. 

Learning to live with less space, communicate and respect boundaries, and use critical self-analysis to adjust your rules and routines as needed are skills that will serve you for the rest of your life.  

And remember, you don’t have to get rid of everything you own to make space for and prepare for your elderly parents to move in all at once. A storage unit can help to ease the transition and give you your own sanctuary for your personal items, collectibles, and hobbies.

But how do you find a storage facility that has all the features you need but isn’t so far from your home that it adds even more stress and steals your already precious time?

Don’t fret–SelfStorage.com is here to help. 

Simply use our storage unit guide to figure out the sizes and amenities you need.

Then, enter your zip code into our signature SelfStorage.com unit locator tool to find the storage unit size and amenities you decided you need in the previous step. 

Our tool uses amenity filters you set to isolate the storage units in your zip code that have precisely what you need. You can contact the storage facility through our site and book your storage unit today. When you find the ideal storage unit near you, we’ll reserve it for you for free in minutes. No commitment and no credit card required.