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I don’t know if it’s just me, but in the last ten to fifteen years, I can’t help but notice this trend. it seems, at least in the New York area, frum homes are getting colder and colder. While you might remember your bubbie and zeides house or apartment as very homey and warm, with lots of carpeted floors, trinkets and chatchkes in every corner, walls and shelves lined with family pictures of the kids and grandkids as well as art, it seems like the trend now is to have homes more like offices or Mansion waiting rooms.
You walk into the house, and all there is, is bare shiny wooden floor as far as the eye can see. The living room room will have a cold, uncomfortable leather couch, maybe one bookshelf with seforim only, and bare earth-tone walls with ornate white moldings and runners, but not a picture painting or photo to be seen, and an extremely bright ceiling lamp. The dining room will be similarly decorated, with bare walls and ornate, unpadded, unfriendly looking gigantic dining room tables and chairs. There might even be a solid marble washing station. Save for the breakfront, no other furniture. the kitchen will be extremely bright, with marble countertops and brushed Steel appliances and industrial floor. the rest of the house follows the same formula.
I would have thought that’s what I’m isolated thing, but I am seeing this more and morein the communities, and when I walk into people’s houses,I just feel like I am either in an office waiting area or in a really austere East European mansion that fell on hard times; the coldness and bare utilitarianism of the houses feels far more “practical” than comfortable, absolutely nothing about these homes feels warm and homey.
Has anybody else noticed this trend? What is this about? Is this simply the current style, or is this some sort of halachic effot to make life in “olam hazeh” feel more uncomfortable and temporary?
If you’re not happy with your house I’d be more than willing to take it off your hands.
Carpet molds easily.
Come visit us. Comfy worn out chairs/couch in the living room, Jewish art and kid art and pictures of kids on the walls, and various playmobil and clicks construction projects underfoot. not a bit of marble anywhere- except the small, round kind that seem to roll everywhere.
I think what you are describing must be some sort of style, but I can’t believe it works in a home with small kids.The trend is real and long-overdue. Younger families like the clean and uncluttered look without all the dust collectors their parents managed to accumulate. They are less attached to “stuff” and don’t have the guilt about throwing out junk from the parents’ and grandparents’ homes they have no use for and had no real market value. Photos are available on your phone or PDA and only a few warrant being framed. They are considerably more discriminating in what items have emotional attachments and everything else is expendable. No more plastic slip covers on the couch, no more piles of seforim that will never be opened, etc. etc. With lots of kids, you have enough junk without accumulating more from prior generations.
This is the Apple/iPhone style. Minimalist, sleek design. Not cluttered. No extra buttons or ports. This is the style of the times.
@quietmedic
Have you SEEN the size of the average house in Flatbush (that doesn’t belong to a millionaire)? Many houses in the neighborhood were built to house a mother, a father, two kids, a cat, and a dog, NOT 5-10 children (give or take). As families expand, sometimes a choice must be made: furniture, or space for the children? Knicknacks that need to be dusted and protected from little hands, and the clutter and constant cleaning it necessitates, or less to clean and more time to spend with kids? Houses haven’t become colder. They’ve become more child – friendly.I’m pretty sure my grandparents had children.
I don’t understand the big deal. Trends change. Do you think the Yidden had carpeting and chatchkes in the midbar?
Why is any of this surprising?
Because nobody’s buying my paintings!
(That might also be because I’m not painting, but still.)ITs to offset global warming
How it is that people have time to worry about this issue, much less discuss it, is beyond me.
How do you have time to worry about what issues people have time to worry about?
There is a misconception here, Spreadthetruth, that you’d appreciate, given your desire for truth – and it’s this – thinking and questioning does not mean worrying.
In fact, often asking questions is out of curiosity, where the mind is actively engaging in understanding the world.
So unless you are worrying here, it’s safe to honestly say that I have no clue what you’re talking about… and maybe you simply do not think the same way as the OP, but know that you do not understand, for then you won’t fall into a place of judging one’s thoughts.
Thank you and keep spreading true truth 🙂
I feel more at home in a more ‘modern’ design house. It doesnt feel cold at all. But when a house hasent been touched in 50 years I feel out of place and UGH too much clutter makes me claustrophobic (note: not too much mess. too much stuff even if its organized.)
Misdiagnosis. People have adapted the goyishe culture of being cold aloof and insincere
The OP’s discription of the decor may simply be the more Modern or Contemporary style.
Also, yes there is a generational thing. It’s interesting to hear other posters mention how chatcheez collect dust, and how people are less reserved about tossing out stuff today than in the past. I didn’t realize that others grew up with stuff around the house too — and prefer less today.
As time passes, the technology age has become more and more sophisticated. Therefore the air-conditioning’s had become colder than ever before allowing the Jewish homes to feel cold almost as if you are in an office. That is why you’re feeling this way.
Have you noticed that virtually all the photo essays of one gadol or chashuve Rav visting another seem to take place in the same rooms the “old fashioned” look and lots of “stuff” like the original post in this thread described….Maybe there is some chiyuv to keep the “alte heim” look…
Gadolha, the chiyuv to decorate my home in the style of Kelm, circa 1904, is right up there with the chiyuv to ride a horse and buggy to the family chassuna like my elter bubby did.
Maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t find the warmth of the home comes from plush carpets or artwork. Some of the warmest homes I’ve visited are very uncluttered, simply because my hosts like the spare modern look and don’t collect tchachkes. The warmth comes from them making me feel welcome and comfortable and I never find myself counting the minutes until I can get back to my own house.
The warmth in the home comes from the heart, not the hearth.Have we reached the stage where there is back stabbing at home like in the office? Oy vey
You stab people in the back at the office?
Golfer,
I think gadolhadorah was being sarcastic.It’s because of all the technology the kids are using these days, like the ipods and the shmipods and the email
RY – that’s what happens when you leave knives around! We warned you, didn’t we?!
30 years ago I had this discussion with a prominent local psychologist.
Many of our parents, born in the 19teens or 1920s suffered from survivor syndrome.
So many material possessions were lost/sold in order to survive the great depression in westen Europe or the Americas or lost to displacement by communists or nazis in Eastern Europe that newly acquired possessions were never discarded. Thus the overstuffed homes full of chatkzes and never getting rid of something made by a child or grandchild.
The current (post WWII) generations don’t know this type of total loss and are more able to discard material things, knowing they can buy as they wish. Even during the economic boom of WWII in the USA the people were limited to how much consumer goods could be purchased with ration coupons due to years of war production. If you couldn’t make do with what you had you could not just go into a store and buy new.I just made an appointment with an allergist for a couple of family members. I figured I should do my part to, and gave the main living area a real thorough dusting (still have to climb up to attack the light fixtures). The style the OP described sounds more tempting now. An allergy sufferer’s haven.
To CT Lawyer:
Yasher koach on an extremely thoughtful and analytic response. Very helpful in understanding the transition from first-generation (post WWII) immigrants to the Millenial look…
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