Do you play one-sim households?

Yes. I usually start with one sim household, often as a challenge (with no money and restrictions on selling, traveling, etc). Challenges help me keep things interesting, because I don't get bored with one sim, I get bored when they are rich. Struggle is fun. ?
If I start as a normal gameplay (20000§, starter home, etc) I tend to concentrate on sim's achievements — careers, aspirations, new skills, maybe owning a business.

I have some. They're the best for having pets because they have time for them and the pets also help to keep the social needs up. You could also give them roommates to spice things up if the house is big enough. Finding romance can be interesting since you're only focusing on that one sim.

• Alexander Harmaja is a famous self-emplyed pianist who lives on Windenburg island with his dog. A lot of time has went into working on his musical aspiration and increasing his fame. He likes to go jogging around the island with his dog. Now recently he also started a romantic relationship with a style influencer who also lives on the island.
  
  
• His brother Harry Harmaja lives in Brindleton Bay in a haunted house that also has the trait that stray cats come visiting. Harry is a painter who also enjoys yoga and aspires to be a good vampire. I have been bored with Harry so he has moved from Newcrest to this new house but I'm not sure if I still got it right. Vampires are hard for me to play because they're eternal and it's hard to keep that interesting.
  
  
• Billie Jang lives in an apartment in Spice District with her cat and two roommates. The apartment needs some TLC, so that also gives her something to do. She works in charity organizions, but is dreaming of becoming an actress. She also does gaming tournaments for My Sims when she has time. My story from earlier this year tell about Billie's love adventures.
  
  
• Urpo Luotto lives in Willow Creek in his uncles old house. He had a girlfriend who had just moved in, but died in a glitchy dryer fire. Urpo got a dog just to get through things. He works in the active police career, but prefers to take his guitar to work and singing while patrolling the streets. I haven't played Urpo much lately, it got kind of heavy after his girlfriend died, but I still plan to play him and hopefully bring some light to his life.
  

These one-sim households first popped into my head and thinking they're probably the most interesting ones. I hope the examples helped in somehow. Do you count it a one-sim household if they have a pet cat/dog?

Edit: I also should add that these sims are part of my irregular rotation, so I play them when I like and then just don't play when I'm not feeling it.

I mostly play with one sim. After a while they may have a partner or a pet. I’m not into family gameplay and having kids. Usually when I start the new game I will have already basics of the story in my mind. Sometimes I will make their lives based on famous people turbulences or things I experienced myself at some point like breaking up, throwing all away and starting new life on the beach lol. To keep things interesting I constantly turn their lives 180 degrees. I embrace autonomous flirt by their partner with other sims, because it gives me reason to move onto something or someone new after a huge fight. Also I have preferred set of traits I use and I see sims with them acting more unpredictable. My favorite of all times is erratic. The Yell at and insult interaction which they use by themselves from time to time gives me a lot of ideas, like maybe they have enough of this person or goes through psychological break down and need to holed up alone for a period of time. Another one I enjoy is gloomy, also many creative ideas can come from this trait. It can also nicely work together with erratic and I used them recently on one sim and results were interesting. My sims also had Emotional Bomb quirk from GF and it got to the point were he acted almost bipolar from time to time. Sure, the positive usually water down negative and interesting traits, but if traits are chosen wisely they may still have effect on sims behavior. To sum up, I play single sims as people who strive to find happiness and success but there is always something in the way like their mental health or troubled personality or other sims treating them badly. But still I always try to think of good ending for them as I don’t like my sims to suffer for no purpose. This kind of gameplay appeals to me the most.

I almost always start out with one sim, usually a female. Sometimes my simself who I have lead a nice decent life working, meeting and falling in love with her one true love and having kids, etc.

While I'm waiting for srsly's cooking overhaul to be updated, I've put aside my legacy save and have moved on to other one sim saves. I created a male sim to clean up the island in Sulani and work the conservationist career. He fell in love with one of the premade homeless mermaids, don't remember which one. I got bored and put that one aside too.

Right now I'm playing a female sim living in San Myshuno in 19 Culpepper House, which is a needs TLC apt. I keep things interesting by having her fight the bugs, weird smells, mice etc in the apartment as well as romancing LOTS of different sims, partying every night, working as a free lance photographer and traveling all over for work, and using mods I can't talk about here to spice things up. She has a cat, too. I rarely play in San Myshuno or with cats, so that's been interesting.

A willingness to use mods is how I keep my game interesting, period.

I have mostly singles or pairs; several of my pairs are siblings. So far I've only had one successful romantic relationship but those sims were lost while switching computers, everything got overwritten when I switched and nothing could be salvaged. Ah well, I'd only played that game for a couple of months. For some reason the sims I want to fall in love never seem to be on the same page; one of them will be all flirty while the other totally ignores them.

I generally have trouble keeping my single sims social need up, but with CoL it's doing ok, because my sim is constantly going to HOB to sell her harvestables and talking to her plants, chickens and llama, or doing errands which often means talking to other sims.

How do I keep my game interesting? I don't really know how to answer that. I jump around from sim to sim, and sometimes from save game to save game so that helps to keep things interesting. I guess I play rotationally, but without any strict rules regarding when I switch households or game saves. I usually do whatever I feel like doing for that particular session. Sometimes I'll do a bit of finessing on a build while I'm deciding which sim to play, or I'll just decide to build all day. There've been times I just built for a couple of weeks, followed by strictly playing for a month or so.

Whenever I start a new sim or family I usually will spend quite a bit of time with them for several weeks or longer, skilling them up and getting an idea of the way they are going to develop. I like that sometimes they don't turn out how I thought they'd be, quite often I go with whatever they want and see where it takes them.

I usually start out with a single sim but most of them will start a family after a few weeks.

Yes, I play rotationally so this happens. They are usually travellers-adventurers. They work as freelancers, mostly painting or writing so they can work on the laptop anywhere, even on a vacation. They have dogs that they train.

My gameplay is usually about 40% single gameplay and 60% family gameplay. I only have one household of 5 though in one save, When a new pack releases I move the sim mom out and play her as a single sim while getting to experience the new pack without any other distractions. She is currently living in Windenberg in the Cordelia's Cottage lot. She has a rooster and a hen, a cow, and a llama. Once she completes the Country Caretaker aspiration I'll move her back into the family home, give them a few more animals to take care of and introduce the rest of the family to the joys of country living. I usually play the single household for 2-3 months so as not to rush through the new pack features. During this time the sim mom is still participating in family activities, visiting the family household, etc.

https://i.imgur.com/6qpL3cr.png

I love playing single sim cause its so nice not having to worry over many sims and you got time to do all kinds of fun stuff

but for sake of bigger gene pool and mix of family trees i do often end up giving them families after a while

some things that i tend to do with single sims?

active careers, skills, playing as occult sim, collecting, travelling, exploring venues, homeless sims, farming is pretty neat on your own too..random stuff like making babies with all sims in world minus actually taking care of them... :sweat_smile:

basically anything thats easier to do with just one sim around

if you really don't want family but also want to play more than one sim you could also build 2 houses on same lot and have "neighbors" or make roomies, sim love island or anything like that just gathering random singles

I play plenty of one-sim households, usually because the sim in question is exploring some element of the game or being used for a storytelling purpose for which other sims would just get in the way. Or it's an NPC household I'm taking over for a bit to get the sim inside to the top of their career as a short diversion. Or they're destined for family life but they haven't met the ideal partner yet. Or because it's Tuesday.

But for the most part, it's because my single sims are doing "character in a video game" things rather than "member of a family and broader community" things.