5 Things That Happen When You Are in a Large Family
- largefamilyarrows
- Feb 18, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Originally published February 18, 2020
Updated August 12, 2025
Have you ever wondered how large families live? Or ever think how they afford all those children? Maybe you scratch your head and think, Why do they have all those children anyway?
In this blog post, I hope to answer these questions and more.
The Why can be found in this post. Children Are a Blessing: Trusting God with Your Family Size
You also might enjoy Seeing Children as a Gift and Not a Burden
Hi, I’m Wendy Muse, and I’m a busy but blessed Mom of 8 children. Their ages currently are 30, 28, 22, 21, 19, 16, 14, and 12. I also have 4 grandbabies and a new one due in December.
As a family of any size, there are always things to keep us hopping. I am a wife to a great husband of 33 years, a Pastor’s wife, a stay-at-home, and a homeschooling Mom for 25 years and counting. Wow! That feels unbelievable, and went by so quickly. Besides being bigger than a normal-sized family, our family is just like any other family.
As we dive into some of the things about larger families. Just keep in mind. I am not some kind of super mom. I am not that organized. I have to work at it. I also read or watch videos on how other moms do it.
I don’t consider myself to be an expert. I do enjoy my family, though, and being a mom. I feel along the way, however, I have picked up some tips and tricks to help my family run more efficiently and possibly give ideas to help yours.
5 Things That Happen When You Are in a Large Family
Number One- Everyone enjoys the birthday parties of each family member as they come around. You can never have too much cake, can you? My kids always enjoy whatever new toy, gismo, or gadget that comes into the house during birthdays and Christmas.
It makes for a great time that all my family gets to share in. We just had a birthday party in our family, and my youngest declared that he wanted the same gifts for his birthday, which isn’t till June. It just goes to show that you can have your cake and eat it too.
Number Two- The kids never get lonely in a large family. There is always someone around, and they never lack playmates to play with. When I had just my first child, we would go on walks around the neighborhood. He would want to go up to a stranger’s house, where he saw other children playing.
That’s when I knew it was time to expand our family. I feel very blessed with the children God has given to us, though I surely couldn’t have imagined back then just how it would expand. Our children always have someone to either share in the fun with or someone to fuss with. Either way, they always have plenty of siblings to entertain them.
Number Three- Our family table is a conference table. Right after moving into our new home, we didn’t have a kitchen table. My oldest son came home from work one day and asked, ” If I would like a conference table they were no longer using?” At the time, we were using an 8-foot white folding table, and the price was right. (FREE)
HOMESCHOOL PLANNER FOR MULTIPLE KIDS
Anyways, I gladly proclaimed Yes! After all, a conference table would be a lot bigger than what we were using. Furthermore, we didn’t have the finances to purchase another dinette set after our big out-of-state move. I guess in with our large family we didn't have to have a conference table, however, we find it important to sit around the table and share meals together and talk about our day. So you will definitely need a big one. We have had 14 people at that table at once and we have been enjoying that table for years.
Full disclosure, we are no longer using the conference table because my son built me a farm table.
While the other table served the purpose, I do enjoy my farm table.
Number Four- Vehicle shopping is fun to accommodate 10 people and sometimes more. Our family car has been a 15-passenger van for many years. You will be surprised at just what all you can carry in these vans. Packing is really cool. Clothes, camping gear, musical instruments, etc. There is always plenty of room plus people. We have since down-sized from our 15-passenger van to an 8-seat Honda Odyssey.
After all, at the time of purchase, we still needed a van.
Though today, when we travel, most of the time when we go on trips or just locally, we have only 3 children with us, because the other kids drive. So we are traveling lite these days.
Number Five- I think one of the fun things about having a large family is the perks of doing activities. We have 3 kids who have moved out, and we still have 5 kids at home. However, we still try to hook everyone up together to do family activities.
We just recently all rented a pontoon boat and went out for one of my son's 21st birthday. It was a lot of fun.
Yet, when we go to places together, many times we can get a group discount for having so many in our party.
That’s right, when we went on our Christmas vacation, we was able to receive the group rate, which saved money. There are places that you can purchase an annual pass, such as museums or a zoo, which offer discounts.
We went several years to the science museum and were able to get it cheaper with a family pass that we could use throughout the year.
Upon buying these annual passes, a family of our size can save money by getting the yearly pass rather than purchasing daily tickets. Also, if it’s a close enough place. We can use those passes several times a year for day trips and save money for family outings.
There you have it.
Everyone has lots of birthday celebrations throughout the year.
No one has a reason not to be entertained.
Large table, please, table for nine, ten or more.
Bring on the 15-passenger. We have places to go and need lots of room.
Everyone loves a bargain. Let’s go save some money.
So these are 5 things that maybe you didn’t know or maybe just didn’t think about with big families.
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