Living/Dining/Kitchen: How do you live or how will you live?

Hello forum,

I am interested in how you currently live, or how you planned it in the new house. Do you follow the trend of putting all 3 areas into one large room? Have you separated the rooms? (e.g. with a sliding door) Or have you only separated the living room from the rest?

I am curious!

We don't have a living room or a dining room either. Everyone eats by themselves at the computer or in front of the TV – sitting alone at the table is rather boring and there are hardly any shared meals because sleep and waking times are too different.
The new kitchen will have an island with seating (2 stools or similar). We don't have guests for meals, so that's absolutely sufficient.

Instead of a living room, which no one would use anyway, we have a playroom with PCs and consoles as well as a TV and some exercise equipment, and upstairs there is another TV room, also with a console and television, for gaming and watching [VoD]. However, it only has 11 sqm, so I wouldn’t call it a living room.

The kitchen is located on the upper floor, which basically consists of just one room, since the rooms have no doors and partly no internal walls. So you could say it is an "open kitchen" with passages to the hall, conservatory, and other unused areas.

I find this dissolution of rigid room assignments in the rental apartment style very refreshing. A sofa stands here, a shelf there, independent of room boundaries and strictly oriented according to the daily habits and needs of the residents. It goes so far that we don’t even have a bedroom, but a bed stands somewhere, some wardrobes elsewhere (to accommodate my need to sleep undisturbed at night without being woken up by rattling wardrobe doors and lights at three in the morning. So everything potentially annoying is outsourced towards the bathroom area – also not a room but a kind of "car wash" with pearl string-like arranged stations and doors/airlocks in between, so that noise disturbs as little as possible at night).

Certain "mandatory furniture" like sofa corner, dining table, wardrobe are not found in our house, as they do not meet the needs of the residents. Fortunately, the floor plan of our old building was so open that we can realize all our ideas. That’s usually not the case with buildings from the 70s. Most houses we looked at had small rooms, narrow layouts, and fixed arrangements, e.g. where the kitchen or bathroom had to be. In this respect, we have found our dream house for modern, open living away from any standard ideas and also have more than enough space for everything we have always wanted.

We don't have a living room or a dining room. Everyone eats alone at the computer or in front of the TV – sitting alone at the table is rather boring anyway, and there are hardly any shared meals because the sleep and wake times are too different.
The new kitchen will have an island with seating (2 stools or similar). We don't have guests for meals, so that's absolutely sufficient.

Instead of a living room, which no one would use anyway, we have a playroom with PCs and consoles as well as a TV and some sports equipment, and upstairs there's another TV room, also with a console and TV, for gaming and watching VoD. However, that room is only 11 sqm, so I wouldn't call it a living room.

The kitchen is on the upper floor, which basically consists of one room, since the rooms have no doors and partially no interior walls. You could say it's an "open kitchen" with passageways to the hall, conservatory, and other unused areas.

That sounds interesting!

Are you an entertainment electronics commune?

: Could be.

: Please don't take this the wrong way, it is not meant maliciously, but I wonder if you even have something like family life? From what you write, it rather feels like you are a shared flat, but not a family. -> But, to each their own!

But back to the original question: Why are you interested in this? Presumably, you will find supporters for each of your answer options, since everyone has different tastes. We don't like open kitchens at all, we had one in our apartment and found it terrible. I don't need everyone watching me while I cook, and with a roast you smell it anyway despite the extractor hood. Therefore, definitely a separate kitchen with a dining area, and when guests come, we use the large family dining table that is in the living room. That I have to walk around 2 corners more than with an open area doesn't bother me personally.

: Please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s not meant to be offensive, but I wonder if you even have something like family life at your place? From what you write, it feels more like you are a shared flat, not a family. -> But to each their own!

No, we are not a family, "just" a couple. It will stay that way, otherwise we would have had to separate real rooms for possible children. The different sleeping and waking times can unfortunately not be changed due to shift work. You have to be able to live with that.