A holiday home for two families in Normandy

Two families is the easiest arrangement. The first takes the Master Bedroom downstairs, which works like a small suite, with a shower and twin basins all to itself. The second settles upstairs in the Cosy bedroom, on the same floor as the family bathroom and its bath, which is a blessing for the little ones' evening bath. The children from both households share the dormitory and the bunk room.

With three families, you need a little more flexibility: the third couple sleeps in the dormitory or the bunk room, which hold the rest of the beds. In terms of numbers, two families of five make 10 people and fit without any sums; three families of four make 12, which works as long as one of the twelve is a child or a baby. Check how many beds for how many people before deciding.

The electric roller shutters downstairs and the blackout curtains in the upstairs bedrooms help each household keep to its own routine: one puts the little ones to bed at 8 pm, the other is still up in the sitting room.

The real benefit of a house shared by several families shows outside. Once the gate is closed, the children from the different households form their own gang across an enclosed hectare, between the climbing frame and the trees, and stop asking for something to do. The parents keep the terrace and an eye on the lawn.

A simple tip: agree on two or three shared rules before you leave, such as bedtime, screens and how far they can go in the grounds. Children accept a rule more readily when it applies to the whole gang rather than just them, and no parent has to play the bad guy.

For the youngest, travel cots, toys and a high chair are provided. What the house offers children, and what to bring, is set out on the page about a family-friendly holiday home.

Merging two or three family kitchens into one takes some planning. The system that works best is the simplest, and it fits on a sheet of paper stuck to the fridge. A tip that helps with young children: feed them first, at the bar that extends the table, then sit down as adults.

Renting a holiday home with another family does not mean doing everything together. Each family can park its car on the property, which takes 4, and head off separately in the morning: some to the beach at Veulettes-sur-Mer, 10 minutes away, others to Valmont Abbey, a quarter of an hour inland. You meet up again in the late afternoon, when the children have stories to swap.

Age gaps also need a bit of organisation. When one household has a baby who naps and the other has teenagers, put the baby in an upstairs bedroom, where the blackout curtains make it dark, and send the older ones outside in the afternoon. Fibre Wi-Fi covers the whole house, so there is no fighting over the one corner with signal.

Finally, keep a moment each day without the other family, however short: a walk just the four of you, a separate afternoon snack. That is what lets two or three households last a whole week without getting tired of each other.

The price Idylliq gives covers the whole house, however many households there are. How you divide it is up to you, and it is the one conversation to have openly before booking. Three methods come up often: equal shares per family, a split per adult, or a split per bedroom, with the Master and its private shower counting for more.

Children raise the trickiest question. You can leave them out of the sums or count them as half; what matters is that the rule is written down in the group chat before anyone transfers money. Food goes through a shared kitty, and extras stay with whoever incurs them: €20 per electric car charge, or the €50 cleaning supplement per stay if a family brings a four-legged companion under 10 kg, accepted on request only.

One family handles the booking for everyone. In high season, the house is let by the week, 7 nights minimum: that is often when sharing between households makes the most sense, and those weeks go early. If you are coming as one extended family, with the grandparents, the page on a large house for the family will suit you better.