Large family furniture

I have a family of 15 (being pro-life and full of faith, the baby in my belly counts). At some point, there will be at least 15 butts sitting around my dining room table. Problem is, it seats 12. Barely. We are down to 4 of the original chairs that went with our table, but only 2 of them still have a back. We bought my brother-in-law's Great Aunt Somebody's dining room chairs (may she rest in peace) which, apparently, had never been sat on, and after weeks of rescrewing the bottoms in daily and recurrently hearing the little washer and nut hit the floor (nice ching sound), we're down to one of those, and we only let small people sit on it. We have one brown chair we stole from church, fully intending to give it back, which, if you tip forward slightly will quickly and effectively dump you on your rump. Finally, we have 6 metal ivory hand-me-down chairs that are holding up marvelously. I will only buy metal chairs from now on.

But our table is also maxxed out. We are going to need something bigger soon. Because a priority for our family is being together. At least some of the time, we want to all sit together. So the quest is on. I know that an Amish table can seat up to 20. I'm checking that option out. I also thought about getting some Sam's Club or Office Max conference tables and lining them up.

In our kids' bedrooms, we have 2 sets of bunk beds and a loft over a crib in both rooms. (There are no dressers because we have a family closet - a room dedicated to holding all the clothing in the universe, mostly on the floor, but sometimes hung up or put away.) This works well. But again, we are about to outgrow our set up. The girls' room has a place for a crib, eventually switching out the crib under the loft for a regular bed. The boys' room may not. We have another bedroom which is currently a guest room, but it is in the attic, and messes up the being together thing. They like to be together.

In the living room, we've all but given up. We have a couch, a love seat and an oversized chair. We can squeeze, without fighting, 9 kids onto those pieces of furniture. I almost always sit on the floor (I'm short and furniture doesn't fit me), and right now, the babies rarely sit unless they are sitting on someone else. But for us all to sit together politely, there just isn't room. I have looked at sectionals, but never was convinced enough of one working in the room to spend actual dollars, so hard to do when someone always has something they are done with that will work just fine for us.

We have multicolor Berber carpet in our house. It isn't very soft, but it is very forgiving. In our living room, it is basically a speckled navy blue. This is incredibly tolerant carpet. It isn't attractive, but it is just as attractive as it was 8 years and 6 kids ago. And that's saying something. The carpet on the stairs and in the bedrooms is too light, so some places, especially the stairs, the hallway, and my bedroom floor where a child puked on the run once after eating pizza (why do they always puke after pizza, chili or spaghetti?) and where the dog communicated his displeasure at being left at home alone, are less beautiful than they once were. In my dreams I'd love to get some of that thick multicolored carpet that my dad says looks like something from a trailer park, but I'm sure would feel better to my feet in the morning. But not soon. Not today.

In our kitchen we have an island we affectionately labeled Madagascar because it is 9 feet long, which comfortably seats the 7 matching barstools we bought for that purpose (6 kids ago). We also have a barstool with no back that we have so children can fall off and give us heart attacks and another I bought on discount that is so crappy we keep the booster seat attached to it for a second high chair. The island is a funny place because the kids either love it so much they want to be on top of it, or they abandon it to sit in the dining room to be with whoever initially went to the dining room because they couldn't fit around the too small island. Still, it's great for crafts, for serving lots of small people fast, for company, for putting $300 worth of groceries on to put away, for rolling out and frosting cookies, for school, for tea parties, or for leaving dishes on till you get around to putting them in the dishwasher or away.

We have 4 bathrooms in our house. The one on the first floor is used almost constantly, and sometimes by more than one little boy at once. If you come to our house, I recommend you look before you land, and if you want to be alone, lock the door. On the second floor we have two, a kids' bathroom and a master bathroom. The kids one is only used by the boys, because someone saw a spider in there once. The girls use the master bathroom. All the time. Day or night. Without knocking. There is a 4th bathroom in the attic which we only really clean when company is coming, and were we keep 5 or 6 plastic cups, just in case.

Our attic is finished, like having a finished basement on the top of your house (because our old-house basement is dungeon like). It is where the tv lives, where most of the bowls migrate weekly in honor of popcorn and candy night, where the toys are supposed to be (mostly on the floor in front of the bathroom door, apparently) and where we keep our flock of mice.