I started this a week or so ago and I think it's going okay so far - even if the large family is proving difficult to manage at times and the lot traits are a pain.
A trip to the park with the adults and teens all fishing and collecting whilst the kids worked on their aspirations and the toddlers worked on their skills (via babbling to themselves and each other, wandering, and using the 'what's that?' interaction on various things to gain thinking skill) helped me get all 8 bed spots on day 1. Starting in Agave abode with 3 bed spots already provided definitely helped out as well.
By the end of day 2 I definitely had a bath tub and a potty, and soon afterwards I had three bathrooms - one with a toilet, one a shower and one the bath. The sink is in the general living space not far from the bathrooms to minimise sims walking in on each other. Some of the next items I bought were a set of building blocks and a wooden car for the toddlers, a child's activity table so the kids could get started on their creative aspiration and the trash can that gives you $10 per sim in the house for every piece of trash you put in it. The trash can is expensive but with a full house of sims you can get $80 per empty plate, so I've been stopping my sims from doing the washing up and dragging the plates into the trash whenever I can.
In the early days I kept having problems with every single thing on the lot that could break doing so simultaneously when all the sims were asleep, but after that happened to me twice I started getting my sims to sleep in shifts (primarily the adults as they don't have to go to school) so that there was always someone awake overnight. That seems to have solved the problem of stuff breaking and having the sims on different sleep schedules means that I get some time when I can actually focus on a smaller number of sims and things are easier to manage than when I have to keep track of everyone. It does make family trips anywhere much harder though - when I sent them all to the library on Saturday one adult brought a camp bed along and just slept whilst everyone else built skills or worked on their aspirations.
The first of my toddlers has just aged up with all 5 toddler skills maxed (just - I didn't throw him a birthday party and the game forced the age up only a few sim hours after I'd sent him to bed absolutely exhausted having stayed up to finish mastering the last skill). I made him Independent since I knew my adult (and teen) sims would be busy trying to fulfil aspirations and make money, and the faster skill gains and happy moodlet really helped with him mastering all the skills.
His supposedly twin sister has a birthday one day after him and she isn't quite done with her skills yet, but the three she hasn't quite mastered yet are all at least halfway through level 4 so with the extra day to finish off I might even have time to age her up with a cake to avoid the sad moodlet. That will mean either using the crappy oven for the first time (my sims have been surviving on Autumn salad, fruit salad, quick meals and stuff grilled at the park) or buying a better one. I've already upgraded the fridge to get rid of all the negative moodlets from poor quality food in addition to moodlets caused by the lot traits, but I was scared to use the oven at the beginning in case it started a fire and killed one of my sims.
The kids and teens have all got 4 or 5 scout badges and made progress through some aspirations (I assumed that the ban on teens having part time jobs before they were A students didn't apply to scouts, since it doesn't bring in money and if they had begun as children they would still be in scouts when they aged up). All four of them are currently B students at school with another school week to turn those Bs into As and for the kids to complete all four child aspirations. I've been having some major problems with the teens in particular getting tense from low fun, but I've finally bought a computer (primarily because I need the kids to practice typing for their motor aspiration and it's a nightmare getting the whole family to go anywhere together) so that ought to help. I also have two easels, a chess table, a telescope and a set of monkey bars.
In the first few days of the challenge I was making money from fishing, collecting and gardening but now I have some easels (and bought the 'marketable' reward trait for each of the adults) I've switched the main money making to painting for the time being. Maybe now I've got the computer I'll also get started on writing some books. My aim is to complete as many aspirations as possible, so when my adult sims finish their painting and fishing aspirations they'll probably start making money in new ways. Right now, they have about $5000 simoleons, but the first set of bills are due very soon and although both adults have the 'frugal' reward trait I also had to use the thermostat quite a bit and having sims up at all hours has probably been rather bad for the electricity bill.
