Keyboards in the dishwasher!? I can see the appeal of that.
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The only upcoming wedding I’m aware of is comprised of millenials, who definitely don’t want to be burdened with china their GenX cousins don’t want to be burdened with. That’s merely moving deck chairs on the Titanic.
Suggestions to just destroy the stuff is painfully American. I’m not fond of this country’s disposable culture. That’s the mentality that birthed the heinous houses McMansion Hell dissects.
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…I’ll make sure not to invite you to one of my parties, then.
I give away a lot of keyboards; my method is to take 10 or 12 out of corporate dumpsters, run them all through the dishwasher with no detergent, then dry them out in the attic for a couple of weeks (a couple of days, in the summer). After that I test them and recycle the ones that didn’t survive cleaning.
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Yeah, it seems to be an older practice. My grandfather told us about something similar when he was growing up during the 20’s/30’s. His family (parents and nine other siblings at the time) lived in a house much like these. Upstairs was two bedrooms, downstairs was a kitchen/dining room and a sitting room.
Even back then and being relatively poor, they still only used the sitting room with company over or on Sundays. Compared to how my great grandparents lived in partition-era Poland they were well off, eventually getting a car and an indoor bathroom.
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The kids nowadays, they’re like school in the summer… I can’t imagine these sets are going for that much considering birth rates are much lower than they used to be; I would think there would be a glut. We’ve already accumulated two sets already and my parents are still alive.
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Well, there is a silver lining to these ugly things. Their inefficient use of space means that part of their conspicuous consumption are the enormous property taxes they’re getting dinged for. Looking rich is funding all kinds of public programs!
All joking aside, I have some family members who own them. They don’t like them either, but each time they sell their residential house (as opposed to their investment houses that are rented out), they have to re-invest the cash into something of equal or greater value or get hit HARD with capital gains tax. They’re not paying for these hideosities with mortgages…they’re paying for them with cash. They deal with the utilities costs and unused rooms by shutting the rooms off and closing the central heat ducts that feed those rooms. The rooms don’t drop below about 55, so there’s no mildew, etc. (also a dry climate), but they’re not heating what they’re not using. Also, they bought them ‘used’ and got bargains because of their accelerated decay. Not a problem for a family of licensed contractors to fix on the cheap (I’ve earned some bucks digging French drains for busy relatives), and they are living in their income tax shelters. …and paying enormous property taxes. They live in one of the most desirable and well-funded school districts in the area, and the kids are grown-up and out of the house.
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{insert long winded speech about the evils of communism}
Or is that Altas Shrugged? I forget. Embarrassing. I’ve actually read the Fountainhead, and not the other.
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I think of the living room as the one to keep the kids out of and the dining room as the one that holds the table of random stuff. (except for holidays)
The bed in the spare bedroom is where the clean laundry lives. 
My eldest daughter is heading to college this year and I’ve been told I have to give her a year but then her room will become part of the future master suite.
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Ooh I’ve seen a house with a show kitchen. Definitely reminds me of the way keeping a highly ornamented bedroom in pristine condition goes back to the days when you needed one if you wanted a chance to host the Monarch, something that didn’t apply any longer to 100% of the people in the US. Yet for generations there it was. My grandparents also had a formal and informal living room. The formal living room was a pristine example of mid-century style, unchanging in the face of the 80’s and 90’s. Well, until age and death did their thing.
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This is pretty much what she’s saying on her blog, yea.
We have a dear friend that lives in one here in Southern CA that has the most abysmal design. And it’s flipping huge.
You walk through the place and look around and all you can do is ask “why”? It’s 2 floors with 10 foot ceilings (not counting the two story foyer) and a semi-attached casita. I can’t even imaging the summer cooling bill alone with 3 compressors and zones. And they don’t have solar.
She’s not a multi-millionaire, her success came slightly later in life, so IMO, she’s put herself into quite a pickle for being able to retire in another decade or so.
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Ha! yea, ours goes there as well…
And when we were kids, we were not allowed in the living room so as not to soil the - terrible 60’s/70’s - wall to wall carpet.
About 25 years or so ago, my mom ripped all the carpet in the house and had the oak refinished. I’ve never seen any floors like this. They are standard 2 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick boards BUT rather than regular tongue and groove installation, it was all put in with counter-sunk nails with the perfect holes filled.
Our house has oak and a ton of it (house built in 1950) is quartersawn, which looks really cool. We had it refinished last year with no stain and I much prefer that to how it was before being darker.
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Growing up, we always had a “living room” in the front of the house, fitting the form talked about a lot in the comments here–the nice couch and chairs and the few artsy pieces we owned, never to be used by me and my friends. It didn’t go entirely unused, though, as our piano was in there and I did my daily practice there.
Our current home was built in about 1970 and slowly grew out expansion by expansion, though it stayed with a very simple rectangular plan at least. When we bought it a few years back, we got hit with prompt flood damage and have spent the time since slowly renovating it as we’ve been able to put the money together. Our plan is to convert the familiar front living room into a library and the big room a little back into a TV room. If we have guests and are sitting casually, we’ll be in the TV room; if they’re over for games, we’ll be in the dining room, which is barely big enough to hold the table.
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Growing up in a suburb of custom- built (new) midcentury modern ranches, split levels, and an occasional colonial thrown in to break up the landscape, I saw more living rooms with plastic runners and plastic chair and sofa covers than I can count.
Then in the 80s they extended the end of the road thru to the street with the highway exit, and built HUGE colonials and things that defy descriptions, much like McMansions but smaller, only 3 or 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. They were made out of cheap plywood and sold for twice what the established houses cost. 5 years later, the builder went out of business because so many people sued - the roofs leaked, the walls bowed, all kinds of fun problems.
Now, the “old” houses are almost never for sale, whereas there’s a realty sign on every third or fourth of the “new” houses on the street.
The husband and I have talked about having this in our “Dream Home” (subject to winning the lottery or other windfall). We agree: there must be a small sink & counter with coffee making things in the bedroom.
Yep, we use it for daily living. We ran into the “we have more stuff than places to put it” dilemma after both sets of parents had died. We use the lead crystal pitcher for ice water in the fridge, the silver as extra flatware in case we get company, and the extra china was given away as wedding presents. At holiday time, people are flattered that we’re using the silver-plate and crystal, and we let them think it’s special for them, because they think we’re kidding when we say it’s our everyday stuff.
Because of the fragility of some of this stuff, there is some breakage, also, which cuts down on how much room you need in the cabinet.
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It’s not a 12 piece set. It’s a set of (looks at plates) … six, with some spares.
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Ditto! I don’t even use a glass - I just drink straight out of the ‘jug’.
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We had a house that was built in the mid-60s to replace a fire damaged older home. It had a family room, where the TV was, and a living room, where the stereo was. The kids weren’t kept out of the living room, but with no TV in there it wasn’t used as much. Sometimes we’d set up a card table in the living room and listen to records while doing jigsaw puzzles, and I spent a lot of time in there in the dark listening to classical music and the Dr. Zhivago soundtrack.
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We didn’t have a stereo in the living room (also known as the “you’re not allowed in there” room), but we did have a record player, and we were allowed to CAREFULLY play my mother’s collection of Broadway soundtracks.
Sort of like this, except all blonde wood.
The record player was just inside the living room area, and we were allowed in just that far. One step further, and you were in trouble.
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I think some of it comes from agent pressure and our inability to say no to a good salesman/woman. A few years ago my company moved me so I contacted an agent, sent her my upper limit, my needs, and even a dozen hits I got off Zillow of places I liked. The first place she took me to was twice my budget, a nightmare McMansion with the feature I hated more than any other – open levels to the upper floors of empty space I would have to heat and cool but serve no purpose at all.
She said: Oh, this place is much nicer than the ones I told her I wanted to see and I could certainly afford it. I had to explain to her that just because I could afford it did not mean I was willing to pay for it. My budget was firm and my home style was firm and if she was not willing to stay within my parameters some other agent would be. After that things went smoothly for me. A lot of people would succumb to sales pressure though. The agents want that commission. People buy far too many things they cannot afford.
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