I've got similar problems: in Arundel I've been trying to keep the elders in their own home, ceding the ownership of it to the eldest son (and wife) then taking the 'second best' bedroom to keep from having one more lot to play.
I'm thinking that otherwise I'd be putting them all into a place for single elders who work until they die-unless they want tor retire. It's sometimes tough to move them out by themselves because they lose contact with their families.

Many of my sims live in multi-generational households, helping bring up their grandchildren, but that's not the only path open to elders. I really liked playing a group of couples and single elders in @joandsarah77's Magnolia Court Retirement Village - they interacted with each other a lot, owned cats, had guests over, went on group outings downtown and had a lot of fun! I used the residential version, not the apartments, so I was playing the whole 6 or 7 residents as one family and they could wander around popping in to visit each other's units - that seemed more fun than apartments to me. Having one retirement household for a group of elders meant it was easier to keep their ages in sync, and when I played their descendants' households I'd invite the grandparents to visit too, so they didn't lose connections.

Would you enjoy playing an absolutely massive household? Or would it work well to break them up into smaller retirement homes and put groups who have similar interests together? You could have one group of elders who put a lot of time into their gardens, another group for the more bookish sims who would like group literary discussions, one for the highly competitive ones who go bowling together, and so forth.

This is a fantastic idea! I never thought of grouping them by interest. That sounds way more fun than just throwing a bunch of random sims together and hoping no one fights. (Also, I'm now picturing a swingers-type retirement home for romance sims to finally get their lifetime woohoo wants. )

@Simsample Mary Sue moved in with her parents for a day or so. Herb and Coral didn't see any reason to change their plans just because she was staying temporarily with them, and added Marsha Bruing to the family. Mary Sue bought her own place and gave birth to twins. She feels like she's getting a chance to Do Parenting Right this time, and she's sure Daniel is why she had so much trouble with the older twins. Interestingly, she's managed to become friends with Lillith, but not Angela, but it's a very distant call on the phone occasionally sort of friendship. She's not met either of her granddaughters.
Lillith moved in with the Dreamers, married Dirk, and had their baby, Delilah. Darren impulsively married Christy Stratton, then rolled a want to fall in love with Brandi Broke. Cassandra attempted to kiss Darren during the wedding, but he was too busy making out with his new wife, and Brandi was fortunately busy with the violin so Darren dodged disaster by about a millimeter.
Angela moved in with the Brokes, married Dustin, and they all packed up and moved to a new house. It's a mobscene, but with Brandi in Law Enforcement, Dustin in Criminal, and Angela in Journalism, they haven't needed a nanny yet, and Beau is now a teen, Bethie a child, Diane (Dustin and Angela's) a toddler, and Dorie and Dylan (Brandi and police officer Dorian's) are toddlers. Brandi is expecting again, this one is Herb Oldie's. Dustin and Angela are considering getting their own place, but . . . not needing childcare is a pretty sweet deal. Brandi thinks she'd like to have ten kids.
Daniel is on his own in the old Pleasant house, living the Romance Sim Dream, except for that pesky mortgage and child support.
Kaylynn is in the old Lothario house, raising Alyssa (Daniel's) alone and expecting one by Don.
And the Goths are overrun with twins. Alexander has fled to the attic, his old room is full with two for Dina and the late Michael, two for Dina and Mortimer, and four for Cassandra and Don. Mortimer's thinking he might have to hand Cassandra a hundred k or so to get their own place, because now that Michael Jr and Jocasta Bachelor, and Adriana and Bella Lothario are children, there's no place to put beds for them . . . no one but Don knows that what he really wants is to marry Nina, but he's romancing Dina in the mean time when their spouses are out of sight. (Someone . . . Cassandra? . . . made cheesecake, and then there was leftover cheesecake when the ladies were just so hungry, and . . . )
(If I'm counting right, starting with Unborn Baby Broke, aka Bethie, there have been seventeen girls and three boys born in game: the upcoming teen years should be wild drama.)

I love hearing how my build is being used. I use the residential version too, but I give them lockable key doors.

Advice needed regarding what to do with Cornelia Goth now that she's been turned into a Plantsim:

Cornelia Goth was separated from her husband, Gunther, because she found out he'd been having an affair with a man for years behind her back. While living back in the Crumplebottom home, she was using the telescope and got kidnapped by aliens. They turned her into a Plantsim (mod). No one has ever seen a Plantsim or knows what they are. Cornelia is also a Knowledge Sim. I have several ideas for her, but any suggestions would be welcome. She could:
1. Move into the woods and live by herself as a Plantsim
2. Seek help from the members of the garden club
3. Be taken by the military in Strangetown, who are already studying alien abductions, and held for study
4. Go off on a journey in search of other Plantsims
5. Work with Gunther to find a cure (or even with her son Mortimer) and in so doing, heal her marriage

Any ideas for where to take her story are welcome.

I felt I idn't know anythig about the Goth ancestors, so I read up on Cornelia on the Wiki and was amused to find she enjoys "High tea and phrenology" Since she's a knowledge sim and she is supposed to be the matriarch of the Goth family I think it makes sense that she would bury the hatchet with Victor and get to work on finding out as much about her new state as possible. I don't think the cure would be either her or Victor's first thought, though - knowledge sims seem rather daredevil when it comes to experimenting on themselves. I can see them doing all sorts of tests based on what Cornelia is experiencing and then going out with information for the public on what plantsimism is and how it affects a sim's life. The public would complain that they just want a cure, because it takes the public a long time to see there could be anything like an advantage of this newly discovered state of life, and Cornelia and Victor would sigh, get to work on Plantophic C and get back together more by sheer convenience tha anything else. That atmosphere could actually be both inspiring for Mortimer and make him a little bit prone to underplay the importance of emotional closeness (that last bit is for me, I suppose . I see Mortimer as one of those people who easily disregard their feelings and gets confused by them once they make themselves known).

I love all of this and will definitely consider it as a storyline. I should say that I made a mistake when I first typed my dilemma. It is Gunther, not Victor, who is Cornelia's husband. Victor is Gunther's father. I corrected my mistake in my post above.

Go off to live secretly in the woods until she's got to grips with her new condition (better than having the military experiment on her!), then return to share information with the world so that she can help others if the same happens to them. Perhaps it would be wise to approach members of the garden club before anyone else on her return, as they're more likely to find the situation fascinating than run screaming to bring in the military. Cornelia might find herself doing speaking tours and being a bit of a celebrity - but with the aid of a grow lamp, she has plenty of time to work on a cure as well, whether she wants it for herself or only plans to have the option available for others in the future.

Will her family welcome her back if she's still leafy, or would they prefer to see her returned to normal as part of a reconciliation?

I head canon the garden club as having special knowledge about all the plant life of their planet, including cowplants and plantsims, so they would be especially helpful to Cornelia. Since they have no homes, I imagine them living in the woods and communing with plants in their free time.

However, I opened Gunther's house this morning and he had the want to become best friends with Cornelia again. Then, just as Mortimer was getting home from school, Cornelia walked by, so he greeted her. He was very happy to see her and played some games with her until Gunther got home. Gunther started apologizing over and over and then doing some romantic things until Cornelia forgave her, and he lost his want to see her cured. So I am going to play out the two of them working together to make her condition acceptable to the general public as well as to learn more about it. Gunther is a politician, and currently the town's leader, so he is in a position to do so. I can also see Cornelia becoming a celebrity in her own right. Gunther is also currently trying to befriend an older member of the garden club, so maybe she can advise them on grow lamps and other necessities.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses!

Perhaps this is more of a style dilemma than a story dilemma. Brigitte Moltke and Gloria Jones are both having a bad hair day -- they both have their hair in exactly the same style!

It didn't matter so much when Brigitte was a child, but now that she's a teen, and there's not so much difference in their height, people, including me, are starting to get them confused. I suppose it's not too bad for Brigitte being confused with Veronaville All-Stars top player, but she'd really prefer to develop a style of her own. Though much younger, Brigitte (a Virgo) is by nature more conventional and less flamboyant than Gloria. While Gloria says she needs woohoo every day to keep in shape and match fit, Brigitte, unlike her precocious little brother Hans, has so far shown no interest at all in romance, either with boys or with other girls. (This is Veronaville!)

Brigitte feels she really needs a new hairstyle. Ideally she'd like something that combines the modern (she is a teen) with the classical, which sort of goes with her temperament. Can anyone suggest a new hairstyle for her (either Maxis or CC)? She thinks her preference is for something a bit like her current style, but sufficiently different from Gloria's that people stop mixing them up. Since her older brother (Julian) is married to Gloria's son (Andrew) that makes Gloria a sort of relative by marriage. (I'm not sure what you call that relationship -- does anybody know?)

Clearly this must be my favourite Maxis female hair -- in my first weeks of playing, I used it for two of my first three female Sims! It was some months later before I noticed! It's not a bad looking hairstyle -- Maxis used it a bit in their promotional material for The Sims 2.

If recommending a Maxis hair for her, please bear in mind that I only have the first three EPs.

I tend to use the punkflip and pixie Maxis hairs a lot in my game. The punkflip has a fringe, if she's partial to that, and I love the sassy little flip of the ends around the jawline. The pixie (OFB hair) has a thicker fringe than Brigitte has now, but the length is similar. I'm afraid I'm not up-to-date on my CC hair since Portland is currently waiting for the local salon to reach level 10 before custom hairs are unlocked.

I was looking at the DRs for punkflip on that link and this one was pretty. https://gardenofshadows.org.uk/gard...p?topic=13331.0 I think that it's still different enough from Gloria's.

Or hey, she's a teen. Go through a goth phase and dye it black. XD

What about the Maxis lost Darling hair (recreated by Carrit)?
https://modthesims.info/d/612357/da...r-new-mesh.html
It's a remake of a hair that was shown in beta pictures for the game, but removed for the release version. I like it because it has the hair going over the eyes like Gloria's style, but it's different at the back and should make them both easier to distinguish.
Carrit made a retexture too:
https://modthesims.info/d/638061/da...-retexture.html

Might anyone have any suggestions as to what kind of stylistic direction I should take Rozzwell Gardens? It was built to be the housing block for sims in the Military and Science careers (and something of a conjoined twin to the small town of Pladdervale) but now that the Curious and Beaker families have branched out, it's kinda bare. Pretty much only the Grunt family resides there at this point.

I mostly just set up some fencing and terrain because I was tired of looking at big green squares lol.

Thanks @pinkdynamite , @Charity and @simsample !

For the moment at least, Brigitte is minded to go for the Maxis Punklips look, though I've also downloaded the hairs that Charity and simsample linked to, to keep her options open for the future. She definitely looks happy with Punklips hair in this CAS mock-up.

She is unwilling to trust rookie hairdresser Miriam Hunter with her hair; Miriam has now got a bronze cosmetology badge, but does not yet have her own premises, so she's doing hair makeovers in her front room. Instead Brigitte plans on going to Bluewater with her little brother Hans, and let one of the professional stylists at the Bluewater Baths and Salon restyle her hair there. Hans will only be going along for the ride; both his boyfriend (Hermes Hunter) and his girlfriend (Tessa Ramirez) assure him that hiss hair is quite beautiful just the way it is. See his pictures here and see for yourselves. . .

@Ivrats Dargy : I doubt if this will help you much, but here goes. I see Strangetown as a recently abandoned military base. General Grunt, the former commander of that base is left as a general without an army, and is becoming increasingly frustrated. He perceives a serious threat of alien incursions, but his superiors won't take him seriously. When he send them photographs of a crashed alien spacecraft, officials in The Heptagon. without coming to look at it, said it was just the remains of a weather balloon! Buzz Grunt has succeeded in getting permission to recall all the townies in the military career in the area, whom I see as reservists, recalled to active service. They will be required to live in barracks. Now Strangetown has two large buildings that look to me like military barracks type buildings, but the Grunts live in one, and, in my game, the Singles moved into the other one while I was playing along in Joandsarah77's Strangetown Trading Places contest a few years ago.. So I got another empty building of the same type from Jawusa's Simless version of Strangetown and have put it up near the other two, to house the recalled townie soldiers. Now the complication in my game is that one of these recalled townie soldiers holds the rank of General, and moreover he comes from a very distinguished military family. He is General Custer no less. Since he and General Grunt are both equal in rank, neither will want to take orders from the other. So I foresee a difficult situation developing.

By the way I didn't deliberately introduce a General Custer into my game. I have Tarlia's version of Strangetown, and it comes with only two or three townies. Now I like a lot of townies in my game, so I let it generate over 40 of them. One of them is called Luc Custer, and he generated in the military career with the rank of General. Hence I have a General Custer!!

What might that mean for you? Well, you might like the idea of having two Generals arguing about which one is in charge, but probably not! But the idea of adding barracks-type accommodation for your military Sims. You wouldn't have to use the Maxis barracks -- you could build your own.

I have a love triangle in my Pleasantview, and I need help with which way to take it. This has been brewing for a long time, but things have finally come to a head.

Gibson Goth has been in love with Diane Danders Pleasant (3 bolts) since university. Diane is married to Jeff Pleasant. Jeff and Gibson used to be best friends but they have drifted apart over the years. Gibson and Diane have remained close and talk nearly every day. Gibson married Jeff's twin sister, Sheri, under pressure from his family, and they had three kids together. Then Sheri left him to move to the city and live with her lover (she is Romance, Gibson is Family). After that happened, Gibson and Diane made out one time, but then nothing else happened between them, and Diane rejected all of Gibson's advances.

Gibson's oldest child was growing up to adult, so he threw a birthday party. Diane came but Jeff didn't (he works nights). Gibson and Diane ended up in the hot tub together. Diane is now in love with both Gibson and Jeff. She was feeling very guilty, and she is not a bad person, so she told Jeff everything. Jeff was upset but not enraged. He still loves Diane, although he doesn't like her much right now, and he still has wants toward her. He was willing to hug her romantically and flirt with her a little, even though they slept in separate rooms. That same day, a lot happened at the Pleasants: Daniel went to college, both of Jeff's parents died of old age, and Jennifer's cat ran away. So it wasn't the best timing.

Gibson wants Diane to leave Jeff for him. He's always wanted to a life of adventure outside of Pleasantview but couldn't because of Goth family obligations. Diane is unhappy in her job--she's only at level 2 in education despite having all the skills and requirements; she's just never gotten any promotions. She feels bored and wants to learn more about the world (Knowledge aspiration). Gibson's three kids are now adult and teen ages, so he feels free to go have adventures for himself, and he wants Diane to come with him. But Diane and Jeff have been married for many years, and she feels loyal to him, too.

Should Gibson get Diane finally, or should she stay with Jeff and try to fix their marriage? If she stays, I think Gibson will leave Pleasantview anyway. I don't think he'll be able to stand seeing Diane anymore after all this.

I would look at their wants, does Gibson roll a lot of wants involving Diane? What about Jeff? And who does Diane roll wants for?

Another way would be to put them all in a room together on freewill, and see who chooses who!

Something is clearly wrong in the marriage. Study Jeff's wants and autonomous actions. Does he seem inclined to find out what needs of Diane's are being unmet and find ways to meet them, or does he want to forget all about it and not change anything? If it's the second, leave him.

Since you say she's bored, the problem can also be addressed by action on her part, but marriages have two people in them and if she's the only one acting to solve the problem, that's not viable.

Great suggestions from both of you.

Gibson wants to marry Diane. He always has had wants for her, and I've even caught him lurking outside her house a couple of times! Diane rolls wants to talk to Gibson every day, but she also rolls wants to interact with Jeff.

I think Jeff is pretty passive. Autonomously, he gravitates toward wherever Diane is and wants to be around her, but he also gets sucked into his own world (books, chess, solitary hobbies). He's never been one to participate in family life much; the grandparents did a lot of the child rearing, if I recall. I do think Diane needs shaking up. She rolls really minor wants and hardly even wants to skill anymore. And I was shocked she hasn't gotten a promotion in all this time, when she's maxed out a couple of skills and easily meets all the requirements. That tells me she's been going to work with a low level of happiness.

One thing I can do is have Gibson ask Diane to leave her partner and see what she says. She's in love with both guys, so I'm not sure what her answer would be. She also thinks Mortimer is pretty hot, but maybe we shouldn't go there...

How would you simulate that?

It's a mod I have. Literally called "ask to leave partner." I think it's one of midgethetree's mods.

Update, with pictures: Gibson did ask Diane to leave Jeff for him, and she said no. I think this is in character for her. She doesn't like to rock the boat or make trouble for anyone. She's always been a bit of a mouse. Gibson was heartbroken, of course. He has begun making plans to leave Pleasantview as soon as he feels like his kids will be okay on their own.

My feeling is that Diane will continue to be unhappy, but when she finally works up the courage to do something about it, it will be too late for her and Gibson.

It's the "leave partner" mod by Midgethetree:

https://www.tumblr.com/midgethetree...al-hello-im-not

It's a mod I have in my downloads-usually I'll initiate it if one partner is single and the other is very unhappy in their own relationship.

Ooh, good mod! I found a link:
https://midgethetree.tumblr.com/pos...al-hello-im-not

Edit- Fran ninja'd me!

Same -- it's very handy for storytelling. Some other useful mods along the same lines by Midgethetree are the break up anytime and ask to be just friends mods.