I mean it's always the same story with me... No matter what I start with, 28 sim-days later any residental lot starts to look like Redneck Mansion with a helipad on top. All those neatly planned rooms are re-purposed, re-done, re-everything, there's a Coconut Pinball machine by the pool, and a grand piano in the garden (and I had to chop down a couple trees to place it, there was nowhere else to put it.) sims take hours navigating from bedroom to the kitchen, and... and... Well, you've got the picture.

So, are there any ways to somehow, well, limit this? Short of never playing any sim likely to roll lots of "buy stuff" wants?

I often create a large empty basement, where I store all of the trash that my fortune sims want to buy.

hmm.. that's one way to deal with it Another cause of this "feature creep" is children. No matter how much space I reserve for a nursery/child bedrooms it turns out I didn't quite reserved enough. Toddler toys and motive items take up much more space than aanything needed by sims that are child and up and so all those dollhouses and potties tend to end up in weird places, like corridors...

My sims are mostly way to poor to afford helipads and grand pianos, so maybe you need to cut back on the money flowing in. I have sims living in grungy trailer homes, apartments, on farms with no jobs as well as having the hack for halved wages and no 20K handout. Some of those sims can barely afford a 1 by 1 lot when they move out. For wealthier sims I tend to buy businesses, holiday homes or just move them to a larger house with a basement. My legacy family have 2 businesses and a very large basement for career rewards.

Inventory is a great place to stash unwanted stuff.

Better, indulge sims' wants to buy things less, and they'll roll them less. Concentrate on fulfilling other wants, and remember that a good date (or outing) is all ANY sim needs to get to platinum mood, regardless of aspiration.

I like for my sims to be happy, but when there's a conflict between what they want and what I want, guess who wins?

Oh yeah some of those fortune sims make me laugh. One of my wealthy spares wanted a bowling alley. You want a bowling alley when your entire lot is taken up by the house, pool and small garden area? I turned on moveobjects, placed the alley over the pool then put it in his inventory and deleted it. Lol sims-none the wiser.

Agreed with JoandSarah, just because a Sim wants it, doesn't mean they get it. Most of my Sims live on tiny lots 1x1 and 1x2, the largest is 2x2...so there is often not enough room or money to fulfill those wants. And my toddlers do not get every skill object. Some tots love blocks, others the dollhouse, others a stuffed animal. No need for all that stuff! Downsize, you'll save yourself some headaches!

Nope, no helipads where my sims live, few paople have reached the top of their careers but they don't need helipads.

I also usually ignore Fortune sims wants so my sims homes are pretty much... quaint (well not all houses, some look more lavish than others).

I play a less well-to do sims occasionally but, well, this way I don't even need a grand piano. In a tiny cabin/trailer etc I can create an interior design disaster with a cheap boombox.

And although I play these types of sims now and then, I really like fabulously wealthy ones much more. (although only two went to the trouble of actually building a helipad, both quite justifiably story-wise.)

So, I guess I'm just not very good at building and too good at spoiling my sims rotten. :D

Ways I save space so that my sims don't take forever trekking around a giant home:

1. Kids. They share rooms, sometimes even up to 4 in a room. Bunkbeds help accomplish this. No dressers, but a couple of toys or a bookcase. For toddler toys I rotate them. Usually there is space for only 1 or 2, then the others replaced once the tot has 2-3 skill points in that area (I have CC toys for all toddler skills). A one tile crib underneath a Grand Trianon Loft bed with a desk is a very efficient way for toddler and child to share a small room. Maybe the toy box or toddler skilling toys are outside in the yard under an overhang. One tile desks are helpful.

2. Extra special items get used on community lots for the most part. Pools and gym equipment are not "standard" for residential lots, so they go to the community gym instead. Same goes with easels, pool tables, darts, card tables, mahjong, bowling alleys etc. I might have one household that lives in a wealthy, huge mansion with everything but it's not what each family is building up to. Most families will have 1-2 "extra luxury items" in a spare room pre-children. Which ones depends on the personalities of the sims. Once they have little ones that second bedroom becomes a kid room until they are empty nesters again. The items are sold in the mean time and the family utilizes the community lots instead.

3. House design. I like small but easily navigated homes. Wide corridors and several bathrooms, but small bedrooms and living areas. Only ever as many bedrooms as necessary. My families only usually "try" for 1-3 kids and only when they roll wants. If ACR should "bless" them with more then they have a few options: 1. move to a bigger home but only the minimum size necessary 2. the eldest child, often a teen, might go move in with grandpa or auntie on another extended family lot with space.

I have a pet peeve about it taking 2 hours to get from one end of the sprawling house to the other, so I like to keep it small and intimate. Other than my "founding family" that might have a mansion with everything, my sims only get a small selection of non-essentials. My fortune sims don't get a lot of purchase needs met either, unless it can replace an existing item. ie. Sell the cheaper bookcase and replace with the expensive one. One statue in the yard.

My favorite, most-indulged Fortune sim hardly ever rolls a want to buy anything. When he does, he generally rolls it once and is satisfied. Now he has a vacation home, he rolls wants to visit it. He rolled a want for a car; I bought him a truck; he drives it to work and never asked for another. His Knowledge wife and kid rolled wants for musical instruments; he rolls wants to use them. He and his wife sleep in one room with a bed, massage table, and wardrobe; their two boys share a room with desks, bookcases, an easel, and some deco clothes strewn about; the nanny's old room has been turned into a rec room; the dog sleeps in the kitchen; and the living room is where all the musical instruments are.

It really is all in the training. Knowledge sims are the worst in my game - they skip from hobby to hobby and want new stuff for each. Sorry, if you don't use the last toy I bought you, I'm not getting you another one.

When I have toddlers, I scatter the items for them all over the house where ever they'll fit. I will expand the house as needed, but it's on me to see that it is only as needed; who needs more than three bedrooms? All the kids ever do is in them is sleep and, if I happened to put desks there instead of in a central location, homework. So, one boys' room, one girls' room, and one parents' room; or, in a different kind of family, the parents' room, the nursery with a bed for the person whose turn it is to be woken up in the middle of the night, and the room for everybody else. When the family's done having toddlers for awhile, the toddler items go into the attic.

Since I don't have a skill on community lots hack, I do buy them skilling items, and lots of them; but if they want to go swimming or bowling or play basketball, they can go to community lots for those things. You get just as fit in the swimming pool in the park as you do in your own back yard, plus you run into your uncle and the woman he's cheating on your aunt with while your neighbor re-encounters an old sweetheart and strays, your cousin gets into a fight with the Grand Vampire and makes enemies of him, and your estranged brother shows up to help you beat on your uncle and the woman he's cheating with. Who wants to swim at home?

If you simply like to fulfill those wants, why not have them learn a teleportation technique so they can get around faster? They can meditate, learn from the ninja, or become witches.
Personally, I'm mean. A rich family might have a different instrument for each musically inclined member, but everyone else is just gonna have one. Give them a secondary aspiration that's less likely to spend money--a lot of my fortune sims have a popularity secondary because it complements their career wants so well--and fulfill the secondary wants instead.

If your simmies have a lot of money, and you have OFB, you could buy a community lot and sell some of the items that your guy rolls a want for. Just buy it, put it in his inventory, and sell it there later when you don't want it. One of my simmies rolls a want to buy a car a lot, so when he does, I put it in his inventory, and drag it out to the used car lot to sell.

The only way to limit those cluster f*cks is to stop giving in to your sims and buying them every little thing they want. I always hated when I had Fortune sims who would roll the want "By a curtain costing at least $xxx" only to fulfill it and get the same want again only they want the even more expensive one. No...it doesn't even match your decor and you've only had this curtain on the window for like 5 minutes!

For my game I never have overly rich sims. My neighborhoods are pretty modest middle-class based hoods. No one has any crazy helipads on their roofs or bowling allies in the basements. To me that doesn't make sense unless they have a huge mansion and spend money just because they can. But again none of my sims get that rich(due to some hacks I have to control finances) Many of my houses are pre-planned out and on smallish lots. It's very rare you'll ever see me use a 5x5 lot for anything. To me that's just asking for wasted space.

Oh, here's an idea...have a second-hand/resale shop, owned by one of your Sims. When another Sim has too much stuff put it in inventory, send her to the shop, give the items to the owner, (using the gift feature) transfer whatever the shop owner "bought" the items for from the owner to your sim (I would use Christianlov's wallet mod for this, the best I've found for transferring money quickly with little hassle) and when you next play the resale shop, have the owner put the items out for sale.

Hmm...the only problem being if the same sim who sold it to the owner comes back and autonomously buys it! :-/

As far as the "buy" wants go, if I am feeling friendly I will go ahead and buy the object, then shove it into a sim's inventory if it is not something I particularly care for them to have. Then I give it away to townies or npcs as gifts! This takes care of the want, gives me a nice boost to job of making friends for work, and has the added bonus of removing some of the money from my neighborhood, since I get very bored of rich sims.