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Comment by EliRivers | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine the luxury of living somewhere with a room large enough for a big dinner table to just sit in (and not just vanish instantly because it's the living room and everyone needs the space constantly). Author seems to suggest eight or so people around the same table. Wow. That kind of thing is the preserve of the rich or the elderly, who bought a house when they were cheap. Middle-class dinner parties in someone's house used to be quite common in the UK; now they're a rich people thing. I do know some rich people who have dining rooms; a room just for eating in. It does seem very civilised.

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You can make almost any space work if you make it a priority.

As a broke college student we’d have people sitting on the floor in the living room and at random small tables or standing all over the apartment, with guests serving themselves from off the top of the stove. In tiny NYC apartments we’d pretty much do the same thing. In my current apartment in Brooklyn we have a table that can fit 6 in our living room and a kitchen big enough for one is all it takes to prepare a meal.

As an adult I’ve always made it a priority to never have a TV and always have space to hold small dinner parties.

My wife and I have seven children. So 9+ around the dinner table is apparently not the preserve of only the rich or the elderly.

Having seven children puts you in a very small minority, assuming you live in a "first world" country.

Feeding and clothing nine children almost certainly requires a family income above median...

Seven. (presumably) Two have to be adults.

I'm not sure what the median is, but my wife is a stay at home mom (no income), and I make around $100k. In a typical 2 income household that would average out to the two of us making $50k each.

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator-201... puts that at almost 75%th percentile; i.e. your household is better off than three quarters of Americans. Puts you roughly in the upper middle class.

Yeah, but those numbers don't have adjustments for area you live in ($100k is very different in Silicon Valley vs many places in the rural midwest), number of people in the family, etc. I think we would be closer to middle middle class. All of our neighbors are mailmen, receptionists, paramedics, non-profit fundraisers, elementary school teachers, paralegals (though, she got busted on a DUI and is out of work now), etc.

According to some quick googling, median household income for the US as a whole is about $59k, $65k for CA, $77k for SF. So you're well above median, although I certainly wouldn't call you "the rich" (on a US scale - globally we're all rich).

Fun times! We have raised eight kids (mostly flown now), and still often have 12-15 for dinner, sometimes up to 20+.

(We have one of those big Amish extendable tables that go up to 15'.)

We're definitely not rich/elderly (well, early 60's, I guess that's pretty elderly by many young people's standards ;-).

Can you really not imagine the concept that other people live somewhere unlike where you live?

Housing is not that expensive everywhere.

You don’t need to be rich to have a dining room in Northern England; I have, and I’m certainly no doctor, lawyer or dotcom millionaire.

It’s just that most people who had such a room (in traditional semi-detached layouts) sacrificed it when eating in front of TV became normal; might as well get rid of a room with just a table that is never used, and turn it into another bedroom, or an extended living room. I chose not to do that, not even when I lived in your typical 2up-2down terrace, because eating around a table (most days in the kitchen, sometimes in a rearranged livingroom with an extendable table for occasions) is how I grew up, and there can be no tv while eating together.

Obviously if you are in London, any space is at premium; but London is just insane like that. Normal people do have the chance, they just opt out of it.

Ooor you could just flatshare, which easily finds you a flat with two bedrooms and a living room that seats twelve. And hey, you already have another person or two there to take the table seats.

My tables are expandable - normally, it's a smallish table for 4 people, but it can be made longer to accomodate more. These tables easily fit into a standard one-bedroom flat.

You'd sure have to be keen to cook for eight in a standard one-bedroom flat kitchen.

Given that the typical one bed flat has a single room that isn't bedroom, bathroom or kitchen (although actually, many modern builds seem to be not actually have such a room - it's just a living room with a cooking area up against one wall), do you move everything else out of the room with the table in? I'd probably have to move the sofa out, and a cabinet, so I could drag the table into the middle of the room so people could sit all around it, and I certainly don't have eight chairs to put around the table. It would seem like quite a waste of space to have so many extra chairs in the flat permanently just for the occasional dinner party. Where do they go when the table is contracted into four-spaces mode? Or do you borrow some? I do know people who've borrowed furniture for a particular event.

It surely depends on the size of the room. In my father's flat (50 m^2, one bedroom), there's enough room to expand the table without taking any major furniture out. The table needs to be moved to a different spot though. I haven't asked him where he gets the extra chairs from - probably some from the bedroom/kitchen, but still you need more. Also, with 8-10 people it gets crowded in the room, but that's not a problem (or - even more fun) if you're dining with people you're close with.

TLDR: it's not ideal, but doable.

Until just the past month I didn't have room for a dedicated dining table. My trick was to store a hollow door (yes, a closet door I carried back from Home Depot) behind my clothes in my closet. And when I had people over for board games and/or dinner, I'd pull out two saw horses from under my bed and place the door across them. Totally worked, and it even kinda looked trendy!

Chairs, of course, were assembled from various other uses around the apt, and I had a few slight, almost space-less lawn chairs if I needed extra. In my smallest apartment, I'd pull the door against the couch, so that three people could sit down. But this was obviously not ideal because they sunk much lower...

In one instance we actually unhinged the bedroom door to make a table...

All of your issues would be solved by moving out of the city, or not living alone. I also live in a tiny one-bedroom, but definitely not because it's the most cost effective option.

I don't know where you live, but I guarantee you could find a large apartment or duplex or something to rent with a few friends, which would be cheaper than living alone and give you more space than you know what to do with. As an added bonus, you'd have a few reliable guests to seed your dinner parties.

There is a whole category on Ikea of folding dining chairs: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/chairs-stools-benches/cha...

Central London rental property is beyond ridiculous [1] (that's partly why I left). If you choose to live there, it's unreasonable to compare it to anywhere else -- except Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.

[1] https://www.gumtree.com/p/property-to-rent/nice-single-studi...

It is a kind of "civilised" that's increasingly hard to achieve in our squashed lives. I did actually move house a good way north in the UK simply to have more space for things including a permanent dining table. But like most things you can also make it happen under suboptimal conditions if you really want. Folding tables and chairs is one way. Back as students we would sometimes all eat together in a single-bedroom room even if that required people to sit on the floor with a plate in their lap. Another option might be a picnic in a public space (horribly weather-dependent but good fun).

At uni (in the UK) my housemates and I bought some hardboard and extended our tiny kitchen table to seat 12. Sure it was a little wobbly but with a table cloth on it you could hardly tell

My apartment in Oakland, CA is bigger than the apartment my mother-in-law grew up in in Warsaw, Poland. They have more than eight in there most holidays - a lot of it is a matter of smartly reusing space, some of it is making due with less.

Hmm, pretty sure just outside London there are massive homes for what I'd call upper middle class people.

And then in America you can buy a 3000sq ft house for $150k, definitely room for a dinner party because there's not much else to do out there.

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