Do you sometimes just feel...rushed

"shanls96;d-983449" wrote:
So recently I had a big break from sims and I now I have a family of 5 (3 kids)

I just feel like maybe sometimes the day is just so rushed trying to maintain all of my sims needs and homework etc that I haven’t really got time for the ‘free time’ stuff if you get what I mean.

Does anyone else kind of get me or do I just suck at looking after my sims hahah

I'm a generational player(four going into five once the eldest of fourth generation is a young adult. Still a long way away though) and I've been playing the same save for over four months now. This is a big deal to me as I'm someone who gets bored easy. Luckily a friend convinced me to make a facebook page for my legacy and I've stuck with it ever since! My current generation(three into four) has six kids and their spouses. Two of each child are siblings and half of them have kids of their own. In fourth generation there are five already born and three more on the way.

Legacy as follows:
Founders: Ryan Cole+ and Katherine Mooney+
Gen. 1: Benjamin Cole and Alison Foster+
Gen. 2: Hadley Cole* and Marcus Cordova
Emma Cole* and Tobias Worthington
Oliver Cole* and Brianne Atwood (Oliver has an ex-girlfriend named Tiffany Cooper who he had a son with)
Gen. 3: Spencer Cordova* and Natalie Parish
Emerson Cordova* and Tristan Sheridan
Ryder Cole** and Kayla Joyson
Michael Worthington* and Bianca Tanileu**
Preston Cole** and Quinn Ausage
Caitlin Worthington* and Jaime Savea

Gen. 4 has too many to count, but I'll tell you I'm on the verge of having 8+ sims in this generation!

* indicates siblings
** indicates half-siblings. Ryder's mother Tiffany is his cousin Michael's wife's mother. Preston Cole is Ryder's half-brother from his father and step-mother.
+ indicates sim is deceased.

Ever since TS3 I've used a mod to slow down time for this reason. There's not enough time given for different tasks. So having the relativity mod in ts3 and mccc in ts4 helps tremendous amount. I have several large families some with 2 and 3 toddlers, child age and full-time working parents. I have to go help with homework, giving my toddlers vs bath, quality time and walking the dog (I also use a kids can walk dogs mod sometimes). Having these time mods does help. I also like to.prep cook meals for my kids to grab something hot for breakfast and so we can have a cooked meal ready for dinnertime.

I played a household that has like....20 controllable Sims at a time to test my limits of micromanagement? Of course, a lot of modding, cheating, and aging off is involved as I play this like a sandbox rather than try to tell a story (I might have also slowed down the rate their needs decay too but I honestly forgot lmao). They mostly take care of themselves pretty well, save for a vampire that likes to burn himself outside for some reason sometimes, and they actually do an all right job at their jobs.

I think I actually prefer that than having to wait them for them to sleep through unlike single Sim households, because when I play this way, there's literally always someone who's awake, not being in their career right now, or not having their needs be low. I also have ADHD, so I like being able to quickly swap between which group of characters I'd like to play as for now and I have a lot of them I like playing as.

I do have other save files with multiple split households in them, those are my more "serious" playthroughs of the game but I haven't played that save in a while, mostly because I really enjoy feeling like a god controlling all of my playable Sims ever and having all of them interact with each other on the same lot.

If I play with families I just use a mod I have to check off that they have done their homework after school without them really doing it, so I can use that time for hobbies/meeting friends/other more fun stuff. Sometimes I do make them do their homework normally, but between that and the parent's work tasks it feels like there's not much time for other stuff.

@shanls96 Have you tried buying some of the needs-based reward traits, like seldom sleepy or steel bladder? Sometimes having just one or two can free up time, without removing needs entirely.

And, of course, the pause button is great. Set everyone to sleep at slightly different times so you can get them all through the bathroom and breakfast first thing when they wake up, pause whenever someone's avatar goes yellow and take care of needs. I play large families, and this is my method.