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Well unfortunately this didn't work. I followed instructions exactly. When I clicked on mailbox it put a new mailbox on sim. then clicked on sim & reset. No problem I tried it inside the lot and outside the lot. So it does work..but just not on mine. Must be another broken lot! The mailbox has been there for at least a year! I wanted to cheat the sims needs at the time, but accidentally hit "head". The game was a little different back then and didn't have the choices we have now. (with updates etc.) 

I am not a very savvy player. Basically I just like to create sims then find a nice house on the gallery and move them in. Sometimes I do play with them a bit and send them to work etc. But usually just following builders etc. Anyway... I am still not sure what to do with the households.  

When the game tells me I am "playing with my limit of 80 sims, I am not actually playing with them. They are just families I have created and spread throughout all the worlds. So, what do I do to reduce that 80 mark if not delete them?  

Thanks again for all your help the last few days!!!

@2paula22    No worries at all.  I'm glad to help when I can.  🙂   Also, I've clicked on menu options accidentally too.  I think it happens to everyone at some point.

"When I clicked on mailbox it put a new mailbox on sim"

Oh no!  I took another look at this.  It seems the instructions I gave only work when you reset the sim right away.  When I traveled or went into Manage Worlds and back to the lot, the BIG mailbox was stuck.  I don't see any way to remove it without a mod.  I understand if you'd rather not use mods.  Perhaps you could add one to fix this and then remove it?  If you're interested, let me know and I can help you set it up.

"When the game tells me I am "playing with my limit of 80 sims, I am not actually playing with them. They are just families I have created and spread throughout all the worlds. So, what do I do to reduce that 80 mark if not delete them?"

As I said before, the 80 number just refers to the limit of sims you can have in the My Households tab.  There's nothing wrong with deleting them if you want.  However, you could just click the heart icon for any household to Move Into Other Households tab.  This way they stay a part of your game and become like any other NPC.

One more thing ... I was rereading the Bug Report I linked and noticed a workaround that I missed last night.  Apologies!  It was late and I think my brain was already falling asleep.  In post #4, @crinrict offered this advice...
"What you need to do is move your family out through the household manager and back to the lot you were on. Then enter the broken lot in build mode and bulldoze the whole thing. change it to haunted residential, then place the house again and move back in. Now you should be fine."

Even though they were referring to someone else's issue (trying to place a Haunted House on a Rental lot) I tested it with a normal Residential lot and it worked.  I used Manage Worlds and Manage Households to move the household from the broken "rental" lot to another lot.  I went back to the map in Manage Worlds, clicked the Build button on the broken lot, bulldozed the lot and set the lot type to Residential.  I was able to place a Residential lot and have the household move back there.  Maybe this will work in your save with the broken lot.

The broken lot: I am not given the choice to do anything on that lot! It will not let me go into build, or manage household or move anyone out. If I send a sim there to visit it can't go into house or take a vacation there. Absolutely nothing. Including bulldoze. I think it is a lost cause. 

I am wondering if I "start a new game" when the sims first opens will that delete everything I have and take me back to the original game start> Seems like a few years ago I clicked on that choice not knowing what would happen. ???

Mods: I could try using one, but would want to delete it after use. Although I doubt I could figure out how to install it into the game. 

Thanks for all your help!

@2paula22     I'm really sorry for the frustrations you've encountered so far.  So, I'm glad to help figure these things out.

Mods: It's up to you if you want to try it. Really, it just depends on how badly you want to get rid of that giant mailbox. :-) The mod I'm thinking of is called T.O.O.L by TwistedMexi. We're not allowed to link mods so you'll have to search for it.  It is available to download for free. It downloads as a zipped folder that contains a .package and a .ts4script file. You would open the zipped folder and drag those two files into your Documents / Electronic Arts / The Sims 4 / Mods folder. After that you just need to enable Mods and CC in the game and also enable Script Mods, then restart the game. If you decide to do this and need some help using the mod to remove the mailbox, please let me know (it's not exactly an intuitive process).

New Game: Yes, if you choose New Game from the Main Menu, it is a complete reset. You would only have the game / pack sims and lots.  Although, all of your saved sims / lots will be available in the Library for loading; including sims / lots you've downloaded from the Gallery. So, if you wanted to try this, you might first save any of your favorite sim / lot creations to the Library and then you could load them into the New Game save. Sims will keep all traits, money, aspiration progress, and career progress (they do not keep relationships outside the household or inventory items). Also, remember that darn bug with the rental lots so if you place a residential lot on a rental lot, you'll have to go back to Manage Worlds and back into Build Mode to manually change the lot type to residential before moving a household in. :-(

Broken lot: Based on what you wrote, I wondered if there might be a slight misunderstanding, so I wanted clarify something. If you have a household on the lot, you should be able to go to Manage Households to move them. This is separate from clicking to play the lot or going into Build mode. I think once the family is gone, you should be able to get back into Build mode to bulldoze and change the lot type. Perhaps try the below steps. For this example, I've placed the Modern Townhouse you mentioned and moved my Kaialani family in. The lot is now broken in this example.

- From the Map View of the world / town, click Manage Households.

- Then, click the family that is on the broken lot (for me it is Kaialani) then click the Move Household into a lot.

- The map will show up again, so select a lot to move to temporarily (I'm moving the Kaialanis to Manzanita Terrace; it doesn't matter if there is a house there or not because it's just temporary til I can fix the broken lot and move them back. If all the Sequoia lots are full, you would choose a lot with no family in a different world like Willow Creek or New Crest)

- If you get the option to Keep Furniture, change it to Sell Furniture and keep that money! :-) You can get the furniture back when you place the lot again by selecting the furnished option.

- When I click the broken lot, I now get the pop up and it shows "Rental" as the type. Hopefully, you see that too and then you can click on the Build button in the lower right corner.

- If you're able to get into Build mode now, bulldoze the lot and the terrain, then click on the green house icon and change the lot type to Residential.

- As long as you were able to do all of those so far, now place the Modern Townhouse or whichever lot creation you want. Then go back to Manage Worlds and follow the steps to move your household onto the lot (in my example, moving to the empty lot and selling the furniture gave the Kaialanis plenty of simoleons to buy this fancy lot again haha)

- For me, the lot displays as it should and the Kaialanis are now happily residing in the Modern Townhouse.

Broken lot is FIXED!!! To start with, I didn't turn on "testing cheats" just in case that was messing up something. When I saw the photos you included I thought that was really helpful! It turned out to be slightly different. First I was told the family already lived there. So, just went to next step......move them to an empty lot. Was then easily able to bulldoze the broken lot.  Put the same townhouse back on lot. I just deleted the family as I wasn't playing with them anyway. Thank you!

As for the MOD... I am not very confident that I could follow the steps & get it done. So am now trying to decide if it is a big deal to leave that giant mailbox in Strangerville or not. I rarely go that town & when I do I have a family living in w big house on the hill & just play with them. So don't even see the mailbox. 

Meanwhile today I took photos of houses I definitely want to keep if I decide to start a new game. Since I rather like finding new homes & putting them inlets, I might start a new game. A lot of work to just get rid of that mail box! ;-)

I really appreciate all the time you have spent with me working on all this! I will probably have more questions sometime. how do I get in touch with you again? Is there some way to "save" you on "Answers HQ"?

Thanks again!!!

@2paula22    Excellent!  I'm so glad you were able to get that broken lot fixed. :-)

I definitely understand  your reservations about using a mod to fix the mailbox issue.  While I think it's not terribly difficult, there are a number of steps involved.  If you change your mind, you could always search for videos about how to use them or just let me know.

There isn't a "buddy" system on AHQ since it is a help forum and not a chat system.  You're welcome to tag me in future posts; simply type @JonaO703 (I think this is the first time I've tagged myself lol).  Just keep in mind that there are many helpful people here who enjoy working with other players to fix issues.  I also would encourage you to limit your threads to one problem at a time.  This is helpful for keeping track of each specific issue.

Happy Simming!