Growing up, Did your house have the living room that no one could go into?

Yes, and my mother continues to deny this fact. She’s Italian but she didn’t have plastic on the furniture.

Sure. Still do.

Nobody sits on the living room furniture unless people come over. Even though the living room is at the front of the house.

Yes, we could but no one had any interest.

The living and dining rooms were adjoined, and were only used for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, but most guests left for the den and watched TV…mostly to avoid the thick tension associated with these occasions.

Yes, a living room, but not because it was "only for guests" or my parents were trying to keep the furniture nice or anything.

The living room was simply inconvenient to use.

No, we were suburbanite trash.

We usually gathered as a family in the gameroom to avoid my drunken father, who would fall asleep in his Archie Bunker style chair in his underwear, drunk as a skunk, after work.

PS - he'd fall asleep in the living room

Yes, and our house was small. With five people, my parents could have used that space in far better ways, but the impractically unused living room was just what you did back then.

Yep, grew up in the suburbs, everyone I knew had a house like this. Separate living room, for guests, parties etc. We were not forbidden from going in there but had no interest in doing so since the TV was in the Family room. Stiff formal furniture in the living room also made it uninviting. The only time would be to listen to records as my father had one of those huge, huge, HUGE wood cabinet things like a giant credenza just for the speakers and the turntable.

No, my mother always said every room should be lived in.

Yes - it was called “The Good Room”.

Yes, we had seldom used living room and dining room. They primarily got used when guests came over.

As many have mentioned above, the main time the family used the living room was Christmas Day, followed by Christmas dinner in the dining room.

The rest of the year, we ate every meal at the kitchen table. We used the den as the TV room, game room and social room.

When guests dropped by, we entertained them in the den or the kitchen. When guests were invited over, we entertained and fed them in the living room and dining room.

Yes. It was the living room facing the street with the big bay style picture windows, second wood burning fireplace and beautiful drapery. Good memories. We did use it more often than once or twice annually though.

The whole concept of a room no one uses except to show off furniture nobody sits on is obnoxiously bougie.

I love houses that have “formals” to this day.

I loathe the open-concept that everybody seems to have nowadays.

It’s tacky to walk in and see the kitchen right away. Never mind that it should be kept tidy and spotless lest your guests think you’re a fucking slob who can’t keep a house clean.

Yes I’m old-ish. 😬

No, we used our living room for everything. Watching TV, snacking, playing board games, reading books, etc. We didn't have a den. Surprised so many DLers had dens and game rooms.

I also just don't like the idea of wasted space, wasted furniture, etc.

We called it the 'front room' because it was at the front of the house, just adjacent to the front door. There was a door which could close it off from the next room, the 'living room,' where the television set was, with semi-open plan to the dining alcove and kitchen.

But the front room had comfortable furniture and a piano, which I never learned to play. For me, it served as the reading room, where I sat in a velour rocker/recliner and read books. It had a bay front window, but no overhead light. Instead, there was a light switch that powered an electrical outlet, to turn on a lamp - or the Christmas tree lights, during the season.

Fifty years on, most all of those amenities are gone. It's now the computer room, where I'm sitting right now.

What exactly does one do in a...rumpus room?

We did use our living room, but lightly and no food or drink allowed. We were allowed to sit in there to read or listen to music.

Our Christmas tree was in our living room and saw a lot of holiday action.

[quote]R14 - It’s tacky to walk in and see the kitchen right away.

Smell her. Imagine what they thought if the help were black.

Actually, R13, it's the absolute opposite of bougie.

We never had a Den, most houses had a family room near the front door and a Living Room for most of where we spent our time. Game room? That would have been a luxury. Unless you people calling it that really didnt realize it was technically a Family Room.

In my midwestern suburb, show living rooms as well as show kitchens were signs of successful immigrants.

All the cooking and living happened in the basement.

Haha yes! The LR was for Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter. Or Mother's turn at the Card Club she was in. It was also at the fromt of the house with a big picture window that, if we came home late we'd see her in her robe, toilet paper in her hair waiting up for us to make sure we didn't have beer on our breath and to remind us that our father went to bed and she stayed up. God love her.

I rarely went in the living room after my sister and I were goofing around and spilled a tall, completely full glass of Welch's Concord Grape Juice on the light grey wool carpet one time when my parents weren't home. We weren't supposed to play in there, and we definitely weren't supposed to eat in there.

Can you believe that after we tried to clean it up with a roll of paper towels, we actually put a pillow on top of the 12" diameter stain thinking our mother wouldn't notice, and it might disappear overnight? Still makes me laugh.

I don't understand the question.

[Quote]toilet paper in her hair

Your mother sounds like a real shit head!

I jest, I'm sure your mother was a sweetheart, r23. But seriously, why did she have toilet paper in her hair?

Depends on the house. In New York, Paris and Newport, yes. At our camp on Lower Saranac Lake, there was just the one Great Room. My mother was very wealthy but never entertained, otherwise those rooms would have been used a lot in season.

Yes, we had the separate living room and dining room as well. The house was built in the 1760s and Colonial America had no notion of as Open Design concept.

The Living Room held the Christmas tree, the best antique furniture, and the nicest wallpaper. It was used for guests of course, but was also where we all read the Sunday paper. It was the sunniest room in the house, and had 2 couches and 2 arm chairs.

The Dining Room was for holiday dinners and when guests came over; the table had enough leaves to accommodate 14 sitting down. The room also had a built-in corner cupboard.

Our Living Room had always been used as a 'receiving' or public room. The living room was to the immediate right of the front door and had the nicest moldings and wainscotting. The Dining Room was the other front room (to the immediate left of the front door). It was the only other room in the house with original moldings and wainscotting. The kitchen was originally an outbuilding, but a structure was added in the 19th century connecting it to the dining room. Those were the 'public' rooms for guests both in colonial times and in contemporary times.

My family normally ate in the kitchen. We would pull up a chair if a close friend joined us for a meal; the dining room would be used if my parents wanted to impress someone or if we had more than 1 guest for a meal.

Nope, the whole Idea is ridiculous. I played, watched TV, rolled around, did homework, etc. In the living room. I still do. Having any room that is merely decorative is silly

You must be really really poor r29. Usually its the poor who want to impress people with their living rooms. You are either poorer than that or grew up rich but not getting a Porsche for your 16th birthday was poor.

Like others, we had a “formal” living room for Christmas, parties, visiting with relatives, etc. the front door (which we also rarely used) entered into it with a big couch and two other chairs at least. But instead of a den, just off the LR we had a sunroom with a couch and recliner. That’s where we would watch TV. So we always had to walk through the living room to get there.

I also had a play room upstairs that was a converted attic space. The chimney ran through the middle of it. Had all My toys and sleepovers there.

I also want to know why R23 mom had toilet paper in her hair?

No, our house had 2 rooms (living room and kitchen) and a bathroom downstairs. 3 small bedrooms upstairs. No corridor so you had walk through the living room to get to the kitchen and bathroom. No bathrooms upstairs.

My first boyfriend was from the suburbs and he had the living room with the big bay window that nobody could enter. The 'good room'. The door was glass panelled so you could peer in as you were ushered through to the the 'sitting room'. I remember it had cream carpet, white leather furniture, a fireplace and it was so light and airy compared to my house. I thought they were fools not to use it.

One of my rules now is that nothing is spared for 'good use'. I don't have rooms off limits or clothes saved for special occasions or vacations put off for big 0 birthdays. If I ever found myself in a home with so much extra space that I could have untouched rooms then I would sell up, downsize and use the money to travel.

Yep, the “front room” was mainly used to display the Christmas tree in the big window, and when adult guests would come over. I always thought it was dumb that we’d all go in there on Christmas morning to open presents, and then head back to the den where we spent almost all of our time as a family. We also only used the formal dining room a few times a year. Most of our family meals were eaten at the “breakfast table”..which wasn’t really all that much smaller than the actual dining room table.

My mother also liked to make sure the vacuum lines remained undisturbed on the front room carpet. For some reason, my cousin and I decided to play in there one day and my mom flipped out because she’d just vacuumed it.

No, when I was growing up we used the living room daily, but the biggest TV was in the library which was our family room. Made sense: read in the living room, watch TV in the library.

In our place now, the big TV’s are in the bedrooms and the den. There’s none in the living room. The first time a British friend came over he rather over-dramatically said to his wife “Cor luv, watch yourself, they’re so posh they haven’t got a telly in the lounge.”

Yes. But we ultimately switched the spaces for the living room and the den. When the living room moved to the den, I don't think we ever used it again. It came down to using the better space for daily living.

We had both, which now seems so stupid. But I guess it’s evolved to where people have TV rooms for their giant-ass TVs… ours is in the basement…

We had two parlors (divided by big pocket doors) that were not used much, but we had no rules about using them. They had to be aired out when my parents had dinner parties because of the stale cigar and cigarette smells. Women's perfume would get into the upholstery, too.

We used the living rooms downstairs and upstairs and a family room that led to the back garden space.

My parents had a Den, the Living Room, and the Other Living Room.

The den was the most used, a dark Knotty pine paneled room that had the good TV. The Living Room (a/k/a the Old Sunroom) had a huge fireplace and leftover Mid-Century/Scandinavian furniture. It was a good place to read in private. The best place to read or otherwise enjoy in private was the Other Living Room, in my early childhood a sort of Front Parlor of 1930s mohair furniture, which I suppose was from my father's parents, a sculpted wool carpet that would scab up your knees if you should fall on it, and some 1930s-40s Duncan Phyfe inspired furniture of no account. My parents very rarely set foot in it and it was more off the beaten path, more private. I could set up projects there or listen to music or read free of interference from my parents. The mohair sofas and club chairs were like something from a Margaret Dumont film, ghastly and fantastic all at once. The mohair was brilliant, sturdy as cast iron, and the cushions were down stuffed and deeply accommodating. It that it was considered my turf, it was a sort of annex to my bedroom in another part if the house. At some point my parents redid the room in a sort of John Mitchell Cornflower Blue scheme and all new furnishings, and while I had a foot pointed toward the door at that point, the refurbished room never saw any more use than its mohair predecessor.

In a sense, no matter how many rooms you have or how you differentiate their use, it's all variations of living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms by whatever name.

We lived in all of our house, but we had relatives who had the UNENTERABLE FRONT ROOM. As children, my cousins would treat is as if we would get Ebola if we entered it. They were no-child zones. It was also weird that they usually had a picture window next to the front door, with a large "decorative" lamp plopped on a coffee table.

Yes, and a formal dining room.

But they did get used for various occasions.

The living room is where the Christmas tree went up every year, and the presents, so it saw a lot of holiday action. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner were also held in the formal dining room, as were dinner parties.

There was also a baby grand piano in the living room, so I was in there practicing, because that was required.

So our living room and formal dining room did get use when the situation called for it. It's all I knew so I never questioned it.

r30, nope, just poor, we generally had a living room, a dining rook, a d galley kitchen, and bedrooms and bathrooms. the living room was lived in, a general room

[quote]My parents had a Den, the Living Room, and the Other Living Room.

yeah, we never were that rich

Eventually, my Dad added a "second den." There was a living room that was only used for special occasions. The first den was where my Mom watched TV, and then my Dad built a "second den" as an add-on to the house so he could have room to watch TV. I got a small black-and-white TV for my 11th birthday and never left my room after that. I even ate dinner in my room.

more than any thread on the DL I realize now how poor we were growing up. a second den?

Yes! Our living room was mostly for special guests and occasions. In the late 60's and 70's it had mid-century modern furniture, 6-foot-long stereo cabinet, nice wallpaper and drapes, and a fake fireplace, made from an antique mantel my mother got at a yard sale. Around 1980, my mother redecorated with an ivory cream-colored sofa, matching drapes, and powder blue shag carpeting.

Central heating vents meant the entire family knew what Dad was watching. It was a big old drafty house. When we first moved in the breakfast room had built-in benches in red vinyl. Then they gutted it and tortured us with ye olde maple captain’s chairs. This would be the start of geese with ribbons around their necks.

Mine did not, but had several family members with houses with unused living and formal dining rooms. My uncles built their houses, as their father did his, so they were definitely planned spaces that were just great, but wasted real estate. One of my aunts started to turn them into more 'festive' rooms so they were atleast used, another turned the formal dining room into a home gym, (funny to me bc her husband, my uncle is a painter, but is relegated to a small closet in the basement, which was also totally decked out to boy-cave standards for my cousins when they became teenagers).

Spaces like separate formal living rooms and dining rooms are not really allotted for in most homes being built new these days.

The Italians & Greeks in my neighborhood would do that. They'd live in the basement, sleep on the second floor and the 1st floor (living room / dining room, some had two kitchens) were only for entertaining. And, yes, all the furniture was covered with plastic. One of my sister's Italian friend once told my sister that she liked visiting our house because it felt like people actually lived there.

We had a formal living room at the front of the house, which opened to a formal dining room. These two rooms were reserved for the holidays and for receiving and entertaining guests. These rooms were where we had the pricey furniture, heavy curtains, nice wall art, and display cabinets, and yes, Mom had clear vinyl covers on the sofa and armchairs.

At the back of the house was the family room, breakfast nook, and kitchen. This continuous area was where we had the big comfortable furniture and where we all hung loose, put up our feet, and chilled.

Many people had this - and it was such a waste of space. It felt like a Victorian hold-over from 'reception parlors' that were at the front of the house - and no guests went to any other room during their visit.

After the kids got older, my mom finally said Fuck It - put a big console TV in there and said - this is my space now and I can watch whatever I want.

UK here.

When I was growing up in the 70s it was very common for families who had come from the West Indies to have a “front room”. where the adults would entertain visitors and hold special occasions. It had the best furniture, and was always kept tidy “just in case”. It was barely used otherwise.

If I was playing with friends at their house that room was out of bounds. I didn’t understand why until I was older. My house was nowhere near as strict.

It has been recognised as an important part of British Caribbean culture. It has even been the subject of academic research.

R20, in a way, having formal living quarters that nobody uses is kind of a bougie, middle class reinterpretation of the grand houses of the upper class, where parlor rooms, drawing rooms, and living rooms were separate quarters. In more modest homes we lack the space for parlor rooms and drawing rooms, but have kept up the upper class tradition.

Not my house but the family we were closest to, we spent a lot of time there, probably too much.

Our family doctor built a large new house on the lake, it was an amazing house for the times which were the 1950's. They had a family room and a living room which was not at all common for the time. The living room only had a few pieces of furniture and was never used, except for the dogs of which there were many, would use it to piss and poop in. No one wanted to go in there.

The living room was mostly for Christmas, and playing the piano. It was also my mom's reading room. We (the kids) were not forbidden to go in there, but we just had no reason to. There was no TV in there - all the "fun stuff" was in the family room, and the kitchen was right next to the family room.

Were these largely untouched living rooms even nice?

I picture the (special occasion only) living room with old lady furniture and dark wood.

For those that have special occasion living rooms and dens, this is how I picture the den:

Huge-screen TV, over-stuffed sofa, La-Z Boy recliner, i.e., ugly.

Joan Rivers' double height, double salon in NYC. She used those rooms, too. All the other rooms were half height little boxes carved out of spaces in the former mansion.

oops, that's Mrs Astor's drawing room.

Here's the link:

OK not quite double height. But high.

R55, My parent's formal dining room hasn't been touched since the 1990s and is in the French Provincial style with sofa and armchairs in carved mahogany and upholstered in white jacquard fabric. Heavy peach colored drapes and fancy valances hang at at every window, and hanging above the sofa is a large mirror in an elaborately carved gold frame with porcelain couples in kiss and embrace at each end.

The family room has a big screen TV and oversized brown leather sofa and loveseat.

Another product of Italian immigrant parents/grandparents here.

Kitchen in the basement for the bulk of the cooking, upstairs kitchen lightly used. Livingroom only for company and holidays. My mother didn't have plastic on the sofa but my grandmother did.

Also tons of "good" china, linens, towels never used. I don't know what my mother and grandmother were saving those for. Perhaps a visit from the Pope.

I meant formal living room, not dining room.

I hooked up with this gay couple in Brooklyn years ago. They had a brownstone. The older guy was Italian, the younger guy was Puerto Rican. After we played around the Italian guy showed me there "for entertaining" floor. It was like an over-the-top version of the Italian apartment in the Tenement Museum. I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there.

Yes, the front room, we were allowed to go in at Christmas. It had a grand piano in it. In the end it was turned into a hospice room for my mother when she was dying and I felt very uncomfortable going in there, like I was doing something forbidden.

R57, I will never understand how people can live in such an over the top faux decorated place and think it's comfortable. Unless you were born into that like the king or queen of England, but otherwise, why do people with money think that's actually tasteful? And forget about comfort.

This is the first time I've heard of basement kitchens. I love it when I learn new stuff on here.

Nope, our house had a kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and 1 other room that was the living room/front room/family room/den/whatever, that accommodated 8 people. (note the 1 bathroom for 8 people). No basement either. It always amazed me when I went to friend's houses and they had a separate 'family room' or 'den'.

Nobody wanted to go in the living room. So I put catnip on the carpet in there and the cats had a ball.

“That’s the blue room. It’s just for show.”

“You stay outta frunchroom or you’ll get spanked!”

Grew up in NYC. We did not have a den, so the living room - which was rather large -- had a tv in it. My parents had a finished basement, and as kids we would use it, but it lost its charm. My Mom always said that no one wants to go down to the basement, so why bother fixing it up.

My parents' second home had a den, but the living room was still used.

Yes, but not so much because it was formal, but because it had white carpet. The living room, dining room, my dad's office and my parents' bedroom all had white carpet and we weren't allowed to go on it without permission and taking our shoes off. We spent all our time in the other (kids') living room.

Yazzzzzzz! 😵‍💫😱😜

No, we lived in house that was converted from one family to 2 family. We had the 2nd floor (kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom) and then there were 2 small bedrooms on the third floor (slanted ceilings and all). Not a ton of room but it was enough for a family of 4,

[quote]my sister and I spilled a tall glass of Welch's Concord Grape Juice on the light grey wool carpet...we weren't supposed to play in there let alone eat in there.

Lemme guess r24 - you and your sis are still technically grounded to this day, right? LOL

We had a living room that was only used for formal occasions or parties my parents had. There were big pocket doors that lead into the LR & the formal dining room, and most of the time they were kept closed. We spent most of our time in the den as a family, or in our own rooms when we wanted privacy or wanted to watch other tings on TV than the parents, or listen to music.

No wonder I’m different. I never had a room I couldn’t enter in the house

We always had a formal living room that wasn't off limits but we were expected to act accordingly. The piano was in there, but no TV or stereo. In about 1970, my mother bought an expensive sofa that was the most comfortable napping sofa in history, and of course we were forbidden from napping on it. She recovered that sofa at least a half-dozen times. If I lived anywhere possible, I would have taken it and had it covered again for my living room when she died. Instead, it ended up in my brother's mother-in-law's, so I still see it every now and then.

My favorite living room was the house we lived in when I was between 17 and finally moving out on my own after college at 24. It had the ubiquitous drapery-framed plate glass window that you had to drive past to get into the garage, so I always knew when I was in trouble for coming home too late if the lights were on and mom was sitting in her wing-backed blue chair. We came to call it the 'chair of death' because my father spent many days in it as he lost his battle to cancer; then my mother's cat died sleeping in it after a long illness. She had that chair recovered and used it in her last living room, next to the fireplace, which she sat in for many days as she succumbed to dementia. We even brought her ashes home before her internment, and sat the box in that chair.

My mother also liked art, but always said she wasn't a collector. Her collection wasn't impressive, but there were several nice pieces. I got the old-lady-esque oil painting of a Parisian street after a rainstorm that hung over the piano. It sounds tacky, but it's actually quite nice. As a kid, when I wasn't napping on the sofa, I'd stare at it. It was one of her possessions I wanted from her estate, and it hangs in my library now.

You all are rich bitches

My aunt and uncle had the living room you couldn't go in with the plastic covers and white carpeting... the whole thing. They never changed it. They'd recover the furniture in the same or so similar fabric you couldn't tell. They put the Christmas tree in there with an elaborate village underneath, the toy train, lights and angle hair "snow". My grandfather actually bought 3 acres of land and built the house, ran it as a "gentleman's" ranch, and when he died my uncle took it over, so it had been in the family for abut 75 years when he sold it and moved closer to his son. The weird part was that it was like the living room was one piece; in the new house, the room was nearly identical in size and the room was set up in exactly the same layout like you'd just picked it up and put it in a different house.

No. I mean I guess our formal dining room to some extent, but we didn't have a house big enough to do that. I did have an uncle who did. Thought it was weird since the room was kind of cut off from everything.

Nope. Eat-in kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. Unfinished basement, and attic that eventually had half converted to an unheated bedroom. To this day, I’ve never had a place with a dining room. I much prefer an in home office.

No, R19, our help wasn’t AA. Our help was one lady or another from across the border.

Back in the day many women would cross over and clean houses for families and they would head back in the afternoons.

I just noticed your comment way up there.

And I still say it is unseemly and inelegant. Graceless and unrefined, if you will. 😬

And yes, I do try to keep a tidy kitchen even if you can’t really see it until you are in it.

Yes...and no.

My grandmother, in addition to being a chiropractor, collected and occasionally sold antiques out of her own home, which was also where she conducted her practice.

There was a room full of Chinese export ceramics, Art Nouveau vases, Ukrainian Easter eggs, Waterford bowls, Tiffany lamps, 19th century French Academic bronze groupings, Danish inlaid 18th century furniture and the very least efforts of the Hudson River Valley School that was largely off-limits to us grandkids. Unless she was hosting a recital, which meant us jammed into mini-me formalwear and plopped on a gilt mock-bamboo banquette to listen to her play the Steinway while one or another of her friends attempted and failed to give the "Jewel Song" from Faust.

I preferred sneaking into her actual adjustment room, which had a huge monster of a table from the 1940s and was full of cabinets of apothecary jars from the early 1800s. My mother still has some of the latter.

[quote] In about 1970, my mother bought an expensive sofa that was the most comfortable napping sofa in history, and of course we were forbidden from napping on it. She recovered that sofa at least a half-dozen times. If I lived anywhere possible, I would have taken it and had it covered again for my living room when she died. Instead, it ended up in my brother's mother-in-law's, so I still see it every now and then.

R76, why'd she recover the sofa so many times if no one was even allowed to sit on it?

R83, the seasons...

Our first house did not have a den or family room. It only had a living room, dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. Saving grace was the big backyard. We hung out a lot there and in the living room.

We then moved to a larger home that had a living room, family room, kitchen, dining room, five beds and three baths. It was really exciting to have a nice big house and we used every square foot. The family room had the TV and was open to the kitchen but my favorite room was the living room. Comfy furniture, good light, it was perfect for reading and conversation. Dad could often be found there reading and listening to music. We had an old fashion hi-fi and many albums.

Back in the day we played board games and talked a lot. It was lovely and I miss my parents. They were fun.

When my parents downsized after all the kids had moved out, they moved to a ranch style house with one floor so my Mother didn't have to 'do steps' - yet their huge front sunken living room that had a fireplace and built in bar was off limits, even though it was the first room you entered when you came into the house. Instead she had a 'tv room' that was a spare, tiny bedroom where you would find them.

Sad!

Sort of. As others have said, there was no TV in it, so it wasn't popular. The subway kitchen on one side led to a formal dining area which opened up into the living room. That door was always closed. The other side led to a large "breakfast area" which opened up into the family room. There were 5 kids separated by 14 years. I was the "baby". There was an unspoken rule that you had to wash up and wear clean clothed if you went into the living room, mostly used by my father to suck down his pre-dinner Martinis.

I actually spent a lot of time there. When there were heated arguments or whenever Vietnam footage or cops spraying firehoses on black people in the South on TV, my Mom would scoop me up and put me in the living room with a set of Lincoln logs. The dog never lost sight of me, so Mom allowed him to enter, too. It was the only carpeted room in the house. The dog always chewed up the Lincoln logs, so I was never able to complete a project. My family were liberal Democrats who were staunchly anti-Vietnam war and anti-segregationist.

Every house on the block had the identical floorplan. Most of my friends' parents had their living room furniture covered with white sheets. They looked like funeral parlors.

Yeah i think we all did. Determined not to be that way - At our house my husband and I always have our evening cocktail before dinner in the living room. It’s nice cuz it feels more like a date because since the living room is more formal we tend to sit up straight and chat about our workday instead of kind of laying lazily on the den sofas. It also helps that our bar is in an armoire set in the living room. We only have one rule in there. No red wine! And that goes for friends and family too. lol

We had/have (dad still lives in the house) a beautiful living room with a courtyard on one side and the entry courtyard on another, so it had tall windows on two sides. We use it during gatherings because we have a blended/large family but growing up, it was my “I’m in trouble” room where my dad and stepmother would sit down and talk to me if they discovered I had snuck out or something. Very waspy.

R26 Mother went to the Beauty Parlor(!) once a week where the hair spray alone must have cost a fortune. To keep her hair in place all week, she'd wrap toilet paper around her do when she went to bed. Yes it was quite a sight, and in those days toilet paper had those colors - green, blue etc. It certainly never moved.

Thanks for your reply, r91! I've never heard of toilet paper on hair to keep it in place. That's what I love about this place - you learn lots of interesting little things from people's anecdotes. I've conjured up quite an image in my head of what I imagine your mum must have looked like!

Our house wasnt big enough for that but it was very common. Now I have my own big home there is a living room that isnt really used..but I found myself annoyed, when someone who visited recently, described that room as the lovely room for guests. I would never buy into such a thing. Its a 5 bedroom house, so its big...i tell my hubby its too big. But the posh room seems like such a waste.

You don't have to come from money to have lived in a house with many rooms. My family was very lower middle class but we had a drafty old two story house with a huge living room, a den, a dining room, the "back room" which served as an office/guest room, and the room where my mom ironed, a tiny kitchen and rather large, over marbled two room bathroom all on the first floor and two bedrooms, a sunroom, a half bath and a large weird hallway room on the second. They bought it for $9k in 1974 in a small town in the Midwest.

None of the rooms were really off limits though my father sort of claimed more than his fair share. The back room was his office and the sunroom was his music room where he listened to music, drank vodka and felt sorry for himself. When I turned 13 I started hinting that I needed a room of my own (had to share with younger brother) and got the stink eye from him because he needed his "rooms".

Not in the house where I did most of my childhood. When my Dad got a big raise and a new job, we moved onto a cramped, precious, over-decorated house in a foofy neighborhood: the living room was basically a mausoleum.

R91 Toilet Paper World says that colored toilet paper was discontinued around 2004.

In my current home I have a living room and family room. The TV is in the family room and the kitchen opens up to it. It also has a fireplace but is used mostly for dining and watching TV. I think the off-limit rooms happen in homes with children. They can be such sloppy little piggies.

My formal living and dining rooms are on the opposite side of the house of the family room (two stories, beds upstairs) and I had a lot of fun decorating those rooms. Comfy furniture, books, and art on the walls. It's were I read and entertain guests.

I'm an avid gardener and planted the yards so that when you look out the windows you see mostly trees, greenery, and gardens. Another reason I like the living room, you have views looking to both the front and the back yards.

Imagine the time capsule of stink in Joan Rivers' double-height French gilt and gold boiserrie'd drawing room: perfume, potpourri, dog piss, and the stench of a living corpse, all that skin pulled out of sight to the nether regions.

Joan said that her apartment is what Marie Antoinette would have had, if she (Marie Antoinette) had had money. Joan was also president of the condo board.

Her living room is not something I would do, even if I had the money, but it looks good for what it is. I'm sure she consulted with all the right people.

R98, good lord, R98, you do possess an lurid imagination! Where you there? Was there actually dog piss in sight? Anyway, they probably trimmed off the extra skin instead of packing into on other parts of the body. That would cause lumps. How tacky!

Yes, we were Italian (but no plastic on the furniture) and no one was allowed in the living room unless we were picking up the mail at the front door (we had a mail slot so the mail came through the front door and landed on the hallway carpet. However, we could not walk on the carpet (beige) with shoes on or slippers - stocking feet only (not even barefoot). We could only sit in the living room on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. A fireplace is in the living room which hasn't been lit in over 45 years. We only used to light it on Christmas Eve. I live in the house still (both parents are deceased) and I rarely use the living room - I guess from habit ?

The fact that there is a fireplace in any of these unused rooms makes it even sadder.

R101, use that damn room. Walk on that carpet. Enjoy it.

My grandparents had an old Victorian house, 3 stories with fireplaces in the lvg rm, dining rm, kitchen and all the bedrooms. I think that was typical because it was built in the 1880's. When they sold it in the 60's the neighborhood had gone to hell, and a developer tore it down. It was a cool house, but Grandma had the 'parlor' not called the Living Room and she kept all her hard candies in a giant hutch that was in the parlor. The dining room had built into the wall hutches that were on either side of a bay window with cool shutters, and you never were allowed in there except for Christmas dinner or funerals. We would eat in a little nook off the kitchen, which had those cool old fashioned combination stove/small oven doors. The sink was ancient looking, no dishwasher, and the coolest thing was the way to the basement was a trap door (like the Munsters!).

Mom redecorated, and moved and redecorated, R83. And we did use the sofa, just not for naps.

No. But my dad had a locked room in the basement that absolutely no one else was allowed to enter.

Did you ever find out what was in the locked room R105?

Yeah, sounds ominous. Did anybody go missing in the vicinity?

r106 did you order "Psycho Father" from The Relatives Clearinghouse Catalogue in that issue of MAD magazine?

My grandparents kind of had a room like that. It wasn’t forbidden but the tv wasn’t in there and it was quite formal and tidy. I used to pretend I was Virginia Graham doing Girl Talk in there.

No extra living room, just a full basement that doubled as a sex dungeon for my parents and their swinging friends. It also held a ping pong table for family game nights.

Ah the basement in summer. We didn't get Central Air until the late 70's, and we'd watch tv in the basement, play ping pong and pool. It was huge, so we would roller skate down there. It was off our garage, so we could sneak our friends in late at night and use the secondary fridge which had dad's Hudepohl (yuck) beer that we would get into.

One advantage/disadvantage of bi-level homes of the 1970s was that there was an upstairs living room, and a lower level family room. That's the style of home in which I live in currently. For the first time in my life, I'm able to have an "entertaining" living room, because I have always had to use my home's living room as a music studio to teach piano (two grand pianos don't fit into a bedroom). Now my studio is in the lower level family room, and I love it. (Also students are not traipsing through my personal living space). But for most families in the 1970s and 1980s, the lower level family room was the domain of the "kids" and the upstairs was for the adults.

LMAO…yes!

As a matter of fact, my mom would get pissed if she noticed footprints in the living room carpet, because it meant someone had walked through it.

Only for a drag.

R114 love her...could have by Mom. My God she'd drive us in a large Oldsmobile and smoke as she drove. Love how her purse matches the couch. That plastic feeling!

In New England there’s a kind of reverse snobbery where people compete to show not how rich they were growing up but rather how poor unto even desperate their families were. Whether expanding or diminishing the extent of one’s wealth, exaggeration of dire circumstances was the norm, not the exception. Sometimes: my Dad swore he had to line his shoes with newspaper and cardboard when there were holes in the soles and I believed him - he was poor.

During the Depression, my Mom said she never went in the living room in the winter except to wind the grandfather clock before going to church on Sunday. Not to keep the room clean but because they turned off the heat to the living room all winter because they were SO POOR.

She never did explain how my grandmother bought her a brand new 1937 Ford convertible when she was in high school.

Not my own house but my grandparents. I would go in there and slightly move things around to fuck with them. My grandmother noticed EVERYTHING. Ol observant ass cunt lol.