Managing Households - The Sims 4 Guide - IGN (2024)

Sims do not live in a vacuum and, depending on how their lives evolve or simply on your whim, you may find that Sims to change families or houses. We saw the Marriage of Christine National and Freddie Holman, but they did not move in together immediately due to a bug (or possibly a feature) that would have interrupted their wedding. Now that both parties are home, we can unite their families for good.

It's recommended that you save before doing any household management. Things can go pretty wrong, and it's good to have a backup that you can load if necessary.

There are three ways you can get to the Manage Household screen. If you're playing as a family that you wish to bring a Sim into, you can have an active Sim speak to the target and choose “Ask To Move In.” Christine can call up Freddie to invite him over, then use the social interaction. Because they're married, he's guaranteed to accept, and you'll access the screen.

Second, you can bring up the pause menu by pressing the Escape key, then clicking the “Manage Worlds” button near the bottom.

Finally, you can do it from the map screen. Hover the cursor over the house you wish to change, and a few buttons will appear. Click the icon at the bottom that features two Sim silhouette, as shown in the very top screenshot of this page.

No matter how you get there, you'll be shown a screen that features two tabs: one for played households, and one for unplayed (NPC) households. Christine's household is the only one in the Played tab, so we click that. We are shown this screen...

The four buttons across the bottom lead to the features where you can affect the household. The left button (with the pencil) allows you to edit the Sims' clothing in Create a Sim mode. Note that you can't change their names, bodies, or any other feature except outfits. The second button (with the moving van) allows you to move the entire household to a different lot. The fourth button (with the trash can) will delete the household entirely.

The third button (with the two opposite-facing arrows) is the one we want. Click that, and you're taken to the House Split and Merge screen. The selected family is on the left, and the right side is currently empty.

The right side features the same Played and Unplayed tabs, and you can create a new family outright. We click Unplayed here, since Freddie Holman is an NPC. Now, some NPC families will mix up, and it may be a little tricky to find them in the list since we don't know exactly what world Freddie was living in in the first place. We're given three worlds: Willow Creek, Oasis Springs, and Not in World.

Luckily, unplayed families are named by the surnames of their occupants, and anyone who is “Not in World” will always live alone. It's always best to start there unless you know that your target already lives in one of the two main worlds. So we click the Not in World dropdown menu, scroll though the list, and we find “Holman” in short order. We click that to see the entire Holman family (consisting only of Freddie) in the right panel.

We can now adjust the family as we will. If there are multiple Sims per household, we can select individuals to move around freely, including splitting spouses (which does not alter their married status), swapping kids, or any other combination. All families need at least one Young Adult or older to function.

A family can be entirely merged as well, as we want to do here. We click Freddie's picture, then click the left-pointing arrow to get him on Christine's panel. Going the other way would essentially remove Christine from the world, thus rendering her unplayable. We are simply bringing Freddie into the world proper, not ejecting Christine from it.

Because we are bringing in the entire subject family, his entire net worth comes with him. Most families will have variable net worths due to their different houses, possessions, and liquid assets. In Freddie's case, because he is “Not in World,” he has a fixed amount of §20,000, the starting amount for a family. Twenty grand is a huge boon to Christine.

If a family doesn't completely merge (for example, if Freddie lived with someone and we just drew him out), then no money would transfer.

If a family completely merges but had possessions in their family inventories, then we would be given the option here to sell the possessions and keep the cash, or if the possessions merely transfer into the combined household. This is useful if a family has a lot of rare items, collectable items, or if the new household needs some furniture. In Christine's case, she has everything they need and wouldn't have minded Freddie selling it all, but Freddie (again being “Not in World”) didn't have any possessions anyway. In the screenshot below, you can see that the check box to decide what to do about Freddie's possessions is grayed out. (If you have trouble seeing it, the box is directly below the blue text on the right panel.)

Once all the arrangements are made to your liking, click the check mark, and all relevant households will update. The game doesn't fully save, so consider doing so once you know everything worked out.

Households can always be un-merged or re-merged at will if you change your mind, but if someone sold their possessions, they're permanently gone. If you have any doubt about the value of a target's household inventory, consider allowing them to bring it along. You can always sell it later if it turns out to be useless.

Moving

Moving works in basically the same way. Now that the households are combined, Christine finds herself with over §21,000 in the bank, and she wants children eventually. She decides to move; this was only a starter home anyway, and she decides she wants something bigger.

There are two ways to move a family. First is on the Manage Worlds screen. Click the family in question, then click the moving truck button that pops up. This evicts them from the house, though you can move them elsewhere as you choose.

Christine doesn't want to go that way: she can just move from within the game proper. She uses her phone, then selects the “Move Household” option.

This basically lets Christine skip a step as she's taken to the map screen. She can select any lot, even an occupied lot if you want to merge the households. Christine doesn't; she chooses an empty lot across town because she wants to build her dream mansion from scratch. After a single confirmation, she and Freddie immediately teleport to the new lot. All their furniture and appliances are automatically packed into the Family Inventory, accessible through Build Mode, allowing them to simply build the house while recycling their old stuff to reduce their costs.