What are your Sims 3 habits?

[PeregrineTook]

Also, I consider Imaginary friend very annoying feature, and dislike the fact you can do nothing with it - even moveobjects cheat is not allowing me to delete him.
Since gaining enough experience with mods, another habit I have is to place the doll to some empty place on my garden and using Nraas Debug Enabler Purge radius command as this is the only way to get rid of them I know.
Also, never using "save and quit" - for some reasons this seems to be taking more time than separate save and just exiting the game.

Ye, the save then  quit thing.  I didn't know if anyone else did that or if it was just me.
If you just keep the IF in the character's inventory, wouldn't that take care of the issue?

[McHazy]

Ye, the save then  quit thing.  I didn't know if anyone else did that or if it was just me.
If you just keep the IF in the character's inventory, wouldn't that take care of the issue?

Yes, I do save and then quit - I'm a bit OCD about that!

I've found that the sim still plays with their IF if its kept in their inventory, so I normally move it one of their parents and that sorts it out.

[Mahmeya]

Or place it somewhere, go to buy mode and place it into family inventory, that also works.

[Trip]

Place the IFs in the junkyard, because they're trash.

I finally noticed that I have a little quirk when it comes to putting makeup on my sims: every single one of my sims wears black eyeliner, including the men. I have one sim who's a bit of an oddball and wears bright blue eyeliner instead, and another who had dusty brown eyeliner. Most of my women wear lipstick. But I remove blush on principle during makeovers.

[RaiaDraconis]

Yeah, I Shift-Click and delete the IFs as well. They're sort of cool, but if I'm playing townies and their offspring I want them to marry other townies and their offspring. The IF genetics are way too generic.

[HelenMoriarty]

I finally noticed that I have a little quirk when it comes to putting makeup on my sims: every single one of my sims wears black eyeliner, including the men. I have one sim who's a bit of an oddball and wears bright blue eyeliner instead, and another who had dusty brown eyeliner. Most of my women wear lipstick. But I remove blush on principle during makeovers.

I do that, too! Usually, I make them wear eyeliner starting at the child stage, as well as lipstick, because the "natural" lip colour creeps me out. Pre-made sims tend to go overboard on blush, not a fan of that.

I'm fairly OCD when starting in a new town... All townies will be evicted and replaced with my treasured sims, most of which I raised diligently in previous save files until their story kind of ran out. Some lots are bulldozed so I can put my own with rabbitholes in the basement, usually because I dedicate hours to building e.g. a fancy hospital from scratch and want to use it over and over again. I delete beds in houses that stay empty, and give the homeless paps/NPCs etc. makeovers on sight, not to their advantage... One pap is running around in a cow costume I keep aging and story progression off, so major changes will be (mostly) under my control barring freak accidents. Graveyards only have "my" ghosts, too. Free will is set to high, however, and sometimes I just let them run wild to see what they will do. Which boils down to "play with sprinkler" in most cases, gah...

[MeganNicole]

When I'm in CAS, I tend to make Sims with uniquely-colored blue or green eyes and average builds. For female Sims, I'm a big fan of dark red hair and heart-shaped faces. For the males, I like to use a little facial hair (if it looks okay) and shorter hairstyles. Sims I create tend to always have the Friendly or Charismatic trait. Typically, all items in my Sims' wardrobes are customized in Create-a-Style. If I'm creating a family, there will always be at least one Sim who's self-employed. I love that feature from the Ambitions EP.

Regarding the architectural aspect of The Sims 3, I'm not much of a builder, but I love redecorating homes that are already built. I spend entirely too much time in Create-a-Style customizing everything. When I don't feel like actually playing, one of my favorite things to do is redecorate townie homes.

I almost always play in Sunset Valley or Hidden Springs, but I'm trying to get better about branching out and playing in other towns. I tend to gravitate towards the ones I know best, though. I love playing townies. I find their backstories interesting, and it's always fun to give them makeovers and play with genetics. 

When I'm not playing a challenge file, I typically disable aging for a while because I feel the town ages too fast. I used to always use motherlode and place my Sims in an expensive, luxurious house from the get-go, but now I enjoy the challenge of working towards riches. Some of my other habits are always completing my Sims' Lifetime Wishes, picking lots with the Beautiful Vista moodlet (if I'm able to), pausing the game too much to catch my Sims' expressions--pausing too much in general--and not playing past the second generation. Lol. Admittedly, I'm extremely fickle in The Sims 3 and will often get bored with a file after the second generation and start a new game. I'm trying to get better about my last habit, but I always want to try something new in the game.

[Mahmeya]

I also heavily use resetsim cheat. Not really for cheating, but quite often sims get stuck in loop of interactions. And I use it to cancel alien abduction. I will decide if my sim wants to go out and check it, not the game forcing me to just watch.

Also, only once I accepted the 2-day free holidays that adults sometimes get when you have teen(s) in the family. Their wishes were reseted and I had to click away dozens of wishes per sim while the huge ones I progressed a lot were gone...no free holidays ever since. Not worth the time it takes to make it back right.

[Justin2108]

Do you have any habits when playing Sims?
Here are some of mine:
-Making my Sims really skinny
-Using the same few face shapes, eye shapes, nose shapes and whatnot
-Pausing the game too much
-Making my Sims incredibly nice
I'll probably remember more right after I post this, because that's what always happens to me.

Same, just not skinny.

[Fleiding]

My biggest habit is, just like MeganNicole, using the Motherload-cheat to put my Sims in my luxury houses. I mostly play The Sims to build these houses and therefore rarely 'play' with my Sims.

I'm now trying to break my habit for a while and let everyone earn there money instead of getting it for free so they can move in my houses. Unfortunately it often takes too much time, because many of my creations are about $350.000 furnished. Maybe it's better to stick with the designing.

[Randox]

My biggest habit is probably that I never marry townies. In fact, sometimes I have a future couple grow up together just so that I have total control. I guess, I am very picky about looks and traits, and I'd rather start from scratch than cheat edit townies.

I do manage pretty good variety though. While my sims definitely trend towards perfection, I make a lot of effort to make them unique in style and personality. Each sim is an exploration of a concept or type, so I have no desire for clones.

[bubbles]

I (Almost) always:

-Pause whenever I want to cue up and interaction.
-Create the females first so I can be bothered to to create a style.
-Ignore Create a Style with the dudes
-Get bored once the children start ageing to teens
-Spend most of the time on fast forward
-Use the same three facial features

It's nice to see other people do similar things!

[Antalia]

...Some lots are bulldozed so I can put my own with rabbitholes in the basement, usually because I dedicate hours to building e.g. a fancy hospital from scratch and want to use it over and over again.

I've had the game more than a year, and didn't realize I could build my own replacement buildings and stick the rabbithole in the basement...that's genius! Thanks for this idea!

[PeregrineTook]

Some lots are bulldozed so I can put my own with rabbitholes in the basement, usually because I dedicate hours to building e.g. a fancy hospital from scratch and want to use it over and over again.

wow.  So much genius!  I must figure out how to make that work!!  You, Moriarty, are living up to your genius namesake.

[HelenMoriarty]

wow.  So much genius!  I must figure out how to make that work!!  You, Moriarty, are living up to your genius namesake.

Thanks Antalia and PeregrineTook, but it is definitely not my idea. I have done some snooping around this board and many, many, many tutorials to get more ideas because I wanted to know how people created those awesome buildings you see everywhere... If you haven't figured it out yet, you need to enter the 'moveobjects on' cheat (remember to turn it off afterwards) when in the basement, and drag around your rabbithole building so the entrance can be accessed. It may require some testing with your sims in-game; I've had them complain they could not reach it because I had not looked at the main door or placed the building at a wrong angle. Also, spiral staircases are not recommended to access the basements. For some reason, sims would focus on only one of them no matter how many I placed. Took them forever to get down there. 
Alrighty, this is getting off topic... Sorry!

Recently, my habits are
...to create two sims in CAS I don't actually use; I map out several 'generations' (Play with genetics) and after ten or so stages, the final offspring gets to see the light of gameplay
...to use CASt on ALL the things
...to get more involved into the 'story', even writing it out with screenshots for one save
...to build awesome houses then set the money close to 0, it's hard for sims to stay poor anyway...