I would go small and well designed, over a larger home. We are now in our 3rd house in 2 years (first was a small house renovated in the last few months, 2nd was large lots of storage, now medium home that we will pull down).

Cleaning a larger home is a real pain, it becomes so easy to just ignore a space or room, as you can just live in another. I thought 2 living areas would be great, but I just hated it on the end. The hosue was long and I would get tired/bored before I got half way through vacuuming, sweeping or mopping. Lots of storage space, just means that you hang onto more. I really believed that once we had more storage in the house that I would use all those things that had been stuck in boxes, well I was wrong, the stuff was still not used.

We are currently looking as rebuilding and we will not being going for a large home, just one that is big enough to do what we need. There will be smart storage, so the things we need every day we will be able to access easily. Every thing else will be stored in the shed. We would much rather have a small well designed space, than large and useless.