Landscaping. It was not possible for me to do my own yard maintenance unless I wanted to spend every weekend out there working at it full time. In fact, I had a koi pond with a waterfall in the front of my last home that cost nearly $2,000 a year to maintain. I had two big oil tanks that cost me hundreds of dollars every couple of months to keep filled so I could heat that massive place. I had the massive roof done at a cost of $35,000.
You also accumulate a lot of stuff when you have a big house. Most of which you don't need and will never use again. Like that top-of-the-line treadmill that I used a few times until my wife started using it to hang wet laundry from.
A few years ago we moved into a condo that was 1/3 the size of that house in square footage. Our utilities cost next to nothing. We are nice and snug in this condo, no clutter, everything we have here we use. We filled dumpsters full of junk before we came here.
People may envy others with big houses but I am not one of them and I'm glad to be rid of mine and living a simpler, less cluttered lifestyle.
I know those houses well and frequently look closely at the super California homes in movies and shows like Rockford to see if it was a house of one of my customers or friends, or of parties.
For some of my elderly customers with big homes and burdens like you describe who wanted to move, I suggested they find a nice condo and spend their house money from the sale to richly fix up the condo with all the imported marble and such, make their smaller simpler home’s interior as grand as they wished and still have money left over, think of the interior as their palace and not the burdens of the landscaping, and koi ponds and all that sort of thing.
I agree with you about house sizes, we should live in a home, cozy and warm, and of a size that fits you and your family and the stage it is at and your concepts of personal space which vary from person to person, a home not too large for the humans to make their imprint on it.
I have even told people that they need a little less maid service because their home looked too sterile and impersonal.