How many sims can you handle at once in a household?

I usually play with large families and they have anywhere from six to eight sims. I like a little chaos as well. ;) It makes it feel like a real family.

I can probably handle 8 but I'll go with 4 since I have to do a lot of story telling and stuff and I don't like it when some of them get in my way. XD

Three is pushing it, but I play with autonomy off. I like to micromanage every second of their lives.

Properly paying attention to them and not using the "make happy" cheat, 5 is my limit. Not that I can't deal with more, it's just that I don't really enjoy it, it becomes like a task more than anything fun.
I am not against using the "make happy" cheat every now and then when playing larger households so I usually have some large families in my rotation as well.

Five sims is the comfortable limit for me, six if you count one pet.

I usually play a household of 1 or 2 Sims but I don't mind them having a couple kids to make things interesting even though I have bad luck with their parents and caretakers dying and them becoming orphaned early on during gameplay.

I don't like playing large households because it's way too hard for me to take care of everyone's whims, needs and goals for them to achieve their aspirations. However, I hate townies generated and prefer to create my own households that are larger households of 6-8 sims and have them as townies instead. I don't play them but I do have fun creating them just the same.

Eight, it's much more of a challenge and I have been playing eight Sims in at least one household since TS1. I find one or two extremely boring and no challenge at all.

I can manage 6 for a few days+break+few days with 2 parents, 1 grandma, 2 grade school children and 1 working young adult. Adults aren't too needy with some rewards, but still it's a bit slavery for non-working women in the house.
As pets, a rodent or 2 cats can be add.
Ideally it would be 1 sim. Yes, it's very boring but spoiling him/her with everything isn't bad and I can discover game features better this way.

I can handle 8, but it is pretty hectic and they sometimes end up doing their own thing. I play with a variety of house sizes, anything from 1 to 8 and the bigger households are certainly more of a challenge.

My sims seem to take really good care of themselves so I usually just watch to fill in any necessary need just to keep things running smoothly. My average household is usually 5 to six sims with a pet or two.