My house says it's full when there is only 4 sims

[Rorystar]

I'm currently attempting to play through a legacy family and I noticed last week that I couldn't add any more sims to my house.  At that time I had 5 sims and 4 cats. 

In my attempts to fix the issue, I moved all the members to another lot.  This made no difference. I then moved the 2 oldest children (a young adult and a teen) back into the legacy house.  I did try to merge the family back together in edit world but it wouldn't let me.  I was, however, able to marry the oldest and have a child too. Now that there is four sims in the house, I can't have the couple try for a baby or the sibling to propose to his girlfriend.  I have also tried clearing the cache which didn't help.

Another glitch that I have is that I got the teen party opportunity come up when the father was at work (not thinking, I accepted it) and so the parents didn't leave and now the game thinks there is always someone travelling (so I can't do any travelling either).  This glitch happened before the inability to have more than 4 sims thing kick in.
I'm running out of ideas as to how to fix it.

I have windows 7 on an acer laptop with 4GB ram and 750GB hard drive (my computer is less than a year old)
any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Ricalynn]

There is a 10 controllable limit which means if you have 6 animals and 4 sims - you're not going to be able to have anymore.  It's up to 8 sims, up to 6 pets but only up to 10 total between the two and remember this includes pregnancies.  So what is the current total for yourself?  Also - are you opposed to mods?  Do you use CC?

[Rorystar]

At the moment there is 4 sims and one cat, so the total is 5.  I'm not opposed to mods, but have never used them before and only have a limited understanding of what you need to do to obtain them. I also don't know what CC means. (I'm not stupid, just haven't come across it before)

[Pam]

When we say CC here, it means third party custom content.  It's items for the Sims 3 that are made by people other than Electronic Arts.  Some people love it because it brings a different look to the game, but it can be risky and mess up your game.  Mods can also be risky, especially if made by people who don't know quite what they're doing.  I don't recommend a mod as the first thing to try, only as a last result unless you're absolutely interested in them.  We have a special board for mods if you're interested. 

The problem you're having could be a glitched file that may or may not be salvageable.  So, you have 4 Sims and 1 pet?  And nobody is pregnant?  How exactly are you trying to add Sims to the household and what exactly happens to prevent it?  Sorry if you've already tried to explain this part, but we need very specific information to possibly offer some help.

[Rorystar]

Thanks for letting me know what that was.

I've attempted to add sims by (trying) to click try for baby, but a little box comes up saying that the house is too full for the sim to get pregnant.  I've also used testingcheats and shift clicking other sims to move in but the option just doesn't show up. Also I have a sim with a girlfriend and he can't even ask to marry her.

I've stopped playing the game file for the moment, I'm thinking something just went wrong along the line and now my legacy is a bit stuck.  I would like to get it back on track, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it if I can't.

[Pam]

One thing you can try is to evict your family from the house, and then put them right back in.  It might reset the bug that's not counting the Sims properly.  To do this, go to Edit Town and click on your family's house.  When the window comes up, click Evict in the lower left corner.  When the next option comes up, choose to move out just the family, not with the house.  This will put your family on the clipboard.  You can now put them back in the house.  Click on Place Family (or something similar, I don't remember) and choose your family's house for them.  Now you have to click the Change Active Household button on the far left and select your household.  Now you can control them again and hopefully the game has counted correctly and you can do the things you want to do.

[Rorystar]

Thanks for your help, I will try that the next time I play.  I'm a little busy at the moment preparing for my dissertation so I don't have much time to spare. Will let you know if it works.