[michaelchisari]

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't.

The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like to think they'll be expanding soon. People move jobs so often that they have a hard time feeling settled where they are, so they design for that possibility. The modern aesthetic is one of planned impermanence.

[obscurette]

I had a discussion regarding this some time ago with my grandchild who has an ADHD diagnosis. She has troubles being in noisy (especially visually) environments, yet she finds my home (relatively large home full of books, music always playing etc) comforting. She explained that all this stuff in my home is interesting for her and speaks with her - "It's you and grandma, it's full of stories". But the very modern and "must be comforting" environment in school full of patterns and pictures drawn on walls etc is just irritating – "There is no stories, just noise".

[kmfrk]

The acoustics of homes with clean walls and floors can also be absolutely miserable.

Some small dining rooms amplify all the worst noises and make it terrible to be in, drains your mental battery like few other things.

[theoreticalmal]

I’m so glad to see someone else who thinks this. Barren walls, vinyl flooring, 5k Kelvin lights, and scented candles everywhere. It’s like the most miserable consumerist environment imaginable.

[thih9]

There was a reason for those popcorn ceilings and carpeted floors (and it clearly wasn't aesthetics).

[mghackerlady]

A good scented candle can really help make a room feel better. Scent in general does that, though. Incense or a fireplace could also work

[nine_k]

Very much so. This is why, wherever I move in, I try to put shelvesn on the walls, hang something non-flat off them, put closets and drawer units so that they form a jagged line. Not only are these things functional, they do away with the terrible reverberations that every sound produces otherwise.

[austin-cheney]

The noise on the walls is comforting to people on the autism spectrum, provided it’s bound by inferred structures. You have to also understand that elementary school education is almost universally female, much more so programming is male dominated. Like software, elementary school education is also a pool for adults on the autism spectrum substantially higher than general population average.

[david_allison]

> Like software, elementary school education is also a pool for adults on the autism spectrum substantially higher than general population average.

Interesting! Do you have a source for this?

[wafflemaker]

Can you write more thoughts or describe some situations?

[austin-cheney]

I am not sure what you are asking for.

[wafflemaker]

My wife is working in preschool and wanted to have some examples to discuss with her. I know plenty of those for overrepresentation of AuDHD spectrum in IT (especially males), but don't know any for schools. Especially since women are often not that obvious.

[austin-cheney]

I don't have statistics. My wife works in elementary special education. Previously to her current assignment to a classroom with assigned students she worked across the entirely of a large school system as adviser.

[mghackerlady]

Anecdotal, but my cousin has ADHD (not the same, but there seems to be significant overlap) and is working on becoming an elementary school teacher

[boringg]

I think they are asking you to expand. It seems that your comment was short and not full of specific examples to draw from.

[singingtoday]

That's such a great insight. Thank you for sharing this.

[mghackerlady]

I have ADHD as well, and this hit the nail on the head. I eventually learned that if I stay in a single environment long enough, it starts to feel less noisy. For example, since I was in my schools alternative program for most of my HS career, I was pretty much in the same classroom every day for ~4 years. Eventually, the stories came to me

[appreciatorBus]

I am skeptical this is the origin of modern decor. The trend away from ornamentation, toward simplicity, flatness, etc in design goes back several generations and transcends interior design.

If the thesis was true, we'd expect rich people who will never be compelled to move against their will, or to move into less space, would prefer cluttered homey interiors, and poor people would prefer sparse & modern. In reality, the biggest boosters of modern decor are rich people.

[analog31]

Here's the story that made sense to me: In the pre industrial age, visible ornamentation was symbolic of a craftsman's skill and attention to detail, when you couldn't inspect the invisible aspects of a product. For instance a violin has an ornately carved scroll, and features such as the "bees sting," whereas you can't take it apart to see if the neck mortise is precisely fitted. It is one of the few pre-industrial-age products whose aesthetics have not changed much.

Today, those features are no longer necessary, and we look for other measures of quality in products -- for better or worse.

I grew up in a "midcentury modern" house, and my family lives in one today. I find the modern decor to be comforting because in my case it reminds me of home. My mom claimed that the sparse decor was easier to maintain, for instance: "There are no knick-knacks to dust around." Truth be told, the house also happened to be available during a very frothy market, and my spouse would have chosen something more traditional.

It's also claimed that the simpler decor works in smaller houses.

We were not rich. The MCM houses in my 'hood, including ours, are certainly not clutter free, yet still feel pleasant and comfortable.

[AJ007]

What are we talking about here? I didn't read the full article but I looked at the synopsis at the top: "Striped patterns, flickering lights, bright glare, and crowded visual environments such as supermarkets"

With the exclusion of striped patterns, this just sounds like a typical over lit commercial environments, probably overhead fluorescent lights, maybe lights and screens running at different refresh rates. That has nothing to do with home decor of any era or culture.

Also I'm guessing the acoustics are consistently horrible in these environments too. Air quality probably sucks too.

[tayo42]

People are responding to the title. Which I think is a bad summary. It's more like modern lack of design like the quote points out

[analog31]

Indeed, I'm a musician and the acoustics of most modern commercial environments suck.

[appreciatorBus]

With all due respect, if you bought a house during a frothy market, and you use words like “mid-century modern, you are 100% part of the elite class, even if you don’t consider yourself rich. Maybe you are part of the top 10% instead of the top 1%, but that top 10% or 20% is exactly the class I was referring to.

[analog31]

Sure, and today, it's like if you can buy a house at all.

Probably what makes the house less cluttered is that the elite class can afford to throw things away.

[tayo42]

Keeping your house clean and neat is elite? I guess I'm elite lol finally.now what do I do about those bills?

[appreciatorBus]

TBF most ppl reading/posting on HN are part of the elite.

Elite doesn't imply "more money than I know what to do with" it simply means being closer to the upper end the of income and/or wealth distribution, or failing that, being part of some cultural generation that gives you more influence than the average bear, i.e. journalist, university prof etc. The cutoff for being in the 20% of household income in the US is $175K. From what I understand that's one entry level FAANG income.

[mghackerlady]

they could be a fellow prole with an eye for design. We exist :)

[WillAdams]

Only the rich can afford to own nothing/exert effort to have empty space without consequence.

Ordinary folks when presented with an object have to perform a mental calculation over the cost/inconvenience of storage vs. disposal and if wanted again, replacement.

[fcarraldo]

The rich also can afford to keep their minimalist modern spaces clean and clutter-free, through paying staff. These environments tend to look awful when not tended to continuously because a single out-of-place item is so clearly visible.

Cluttered old homes with lots of things all over the place make it a bit less jarring when there's a stack of work left out on a table.

[tpm]

> Cluttered old homes with lots of things all over the place make it a bit less jarring when there's a stack of work left out on a table.

that's wrong: my minimalist (in looks, not in equipment) all white kitchen looks completely fine even after a dinner party, because even then it doesn't look full, dirty or cluttered. The old one (and it wasn't that old, only there were more and darker colors and lines and objects) decidedly didn't. The art of designing modern spaces lies in the ability to make the space visually appealing (in my case minimal) while still able to function correctly. Too often the designers and their clients forget about the practical aspects.

[elf25]

Rich is a mindset. My kitchen has three spatulas. One i bought when i moved out, mom’s and grandma’s. I don’t NEED three but can’t afford to throw two away. Rich see two extra and toss two because it’s just a damn spatula and they KNOW that if they ever need two, they can afford to run out and buy one. Now expand that thought process to everything you own. Declutter becomes easier.

[tpm]

Or you can build enough cupboards to stash away three generations of cooking utensils and no clutter will be visible. But that too demands a bit of investment in terms of money and room space.

[ffaccount2]

I don't get it. Why did you buy a third spatula, if you consider it a significant expense (i.e you can't replace ones you have if they break), and you already have two.

[kakacik]

They are awful to even look at, IHMO. Cold, sterile, tells something about people living in such fugly soulless places.

Which is fine to be honest, its nice to see clearly the type of person on the other side of the table, no need to dig through empty speech clutter for clues. But impressive it is not.

[snozolli]

Only the rich can afford to own nothing/exert effort to have empty space without consequence.

Reminds me of the reason that grass yards exist: to show the world that one can afford land for the sake of owning it, rather than for growing crops.

[pooploop64]

Lawns are for much more than just flexing. It's an outdoor part of your property which is flat and open enough to use for various activities and purposes. I don't know where people get such a cynical idea that this is THE reason anyone has lawns.

[jmbwell]

Yeah this is all very regional too. Row houses in London and brownstones in New York or whatever won’t have front lawns as a function of density, but may have back yards or gardens, which may or may not be a function of producing your own food, which is all tied up in different experiences of war, while certainly countryside estates are for form more than function, while post war housing in the midwestern US was in part a build-on-your-lot market with houses literally ordered from a Sears catalog…

There’s definitely more to the story and there are myriad factors.

[nly]

I live in a London terrace, originally built circa 1900.

There's plenty of evidence the rear gardens were used for growing food and drying laundry back then

Children would also play there where they could be seen from the kitchen (which was always in the rear), rather than playing in the road (as much)

Rear gardens also served as a space where you would converse with your neighbour. Typically fences between neighbours were low and wire (tall 6ft wooden fences came later)

The other thing is the only toilet in a 4 bedroom property would also be out there, as an outdoor WC, accessible from outside

I doubt much read space was reserved for lawn back then

[throw0101a]

> but may have back yards or gardens, which may or may not be a function of producing your own food, which is all tied up in different experiences of war

The neighbourhood of "Cabbagetown" in Toronto is so-named because yards were not used for 'ornamental' plants:

> Cabbagetown's name derives from the Irish immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood beginning in the late 1840s, said to have been so poor that they grew cabbage in their front yards.[2] Canadian writer Hugh Garner's novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the neighbourhood during the Great Depression.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbagetown,_Toronto

[jyounker]

Sears stopped making homes in 1942. They were strictly pre-WWII.

[asdfasvea]

Wouldn't a non-grassy flat and open area serve the same purpose?

[blipvert]

Not sure that I’d want to lie down with a book on a slab of concrete.

[inigyou]

One set of my grandparents had an expansive, well-cared-for yard with a swing, arches with climbing plants, secret little gravel paths through the trees lined with mosaic tiles featuring the likenesses of their grandchildren, a picnic table, a patio with a barbecue, and so on. I think if you want to have a yard like that, it is a fine hobby. But most people do not. Most people just have a grass rectangle that is a liability. My father has lived in the same house for 15 years and has never used the back yard except as throughfare and has never used the front yard for anything. You can't even see it yard from outside because of an eight-foot-tall fence. All he does is mow it - what's the point of that? It's pure liability. And I think this is how most people's yards are. And that's silly.

I've lived in a few row houses with fully paved outdoor areas. I don't really see the point of that either, but at least it doesn't require regular maintenance so it only has to be occasionally useful to come out ahead.

[mghackerlady]

I think prev was talking about the origins of the grass lawn as we know it today and not the concept of having a lawn itself. The specific kind of lawn grass we have is directly a result of it being a pain in the ass to grow iirc

[cucumber3732842]

Lawns are for where you want to put a patio but can't because some boomers 30yr ago decided that was bad and needed punitive permitting to make it not worth it.

[throwaway7783]

A dirt yard is sufficient if it was to show off land. Grass is not required

[mhurron]

It wasn't just showing off land. It was showing off you had land that was completely unproductive and could even afford staff to maintain this completely useless plot. It's why they became increasingly large and ornate gardens.

It then took this association with rich and better and was used in the US to denote affluent and therefore segregated housing developments.

[cucumber3732842]

You see random farm houses and country estates with acres of field that get nothing but mowed they're essentially preserving resale value.

Generations ago those field would have been allowed to grow over because they could be cleared again on a whim.

These days you need six figured of engineering and permitting to clear acreage and ain't nobody gonna do that without a commercial use that can justify it.

[ordersofmag]

The grass is there to keep the dirt in place.

[WhyNotHugo]

The grass proves that it's actually fertile lands, and that there's resources for keeping it growing.

Historically, using land with such properties for grass instead of crops was as sign of wealth, especially for large estates.

[AlotOfReading]

Grass doesn't prove it's fertile before modern fertilizers. Natural grasslands are often resource-poor places that most other plants can't tolerate. We sometimes replace one for the other because our main crops (wheat, maize, rice, sorghum) are all grasses, but e.g. Versailles probably would have had more forests, lakes, or a vineyard if it didn't have the gardens and lawns.

[Retric]

Travel / multiple homes confuse the issue because nobody spends much time on their 5th house they use less than a month per year, so the decoration is mostly outsourced to 3rd parties.

The portion of rich people homes they actually use are often quite cluttered. The simple limitation of needing to walk to a room to use it means spreading out across a huge home gets annoying. Semi public spaces for guests on the other hand can look like hotels because that’s effectively what they are.

[bluGill]

Space is a factor too. I toured the mansion one time a few years back because a friend of mine was remodeling it. The master bedroom was as large as my entire house. That's a single bedroom for the two people planned to live there. I saw it while it was still under construction and so completely unlivable and but you could quickly figure out which parts were intended for the people lived there to live in and which parts were semi-public most of the mansion was clearly public spaces where they would have parties.

[throwaway5752]

This is a false dichotomy. The modern style is a reaction against a distinct and different design aesthetic from what the parent described. Neoclassical, Gothic Revival, and Rococo are more ornamental, but they not cozy or comfortable in the same way.

This being said, the title is accurate to the article but misleading. The subtitle is about "Striped Floors and Flickering LEDs". It isn't modern design, it's specific elements of modern design.

I'd suggest that the striped/patterned floors/LED points transcend styles, and would cause issues even in a more ornate/classical design. Style is individual, and I expect the diversities of brains and thinking patterns means that there is no right answer for what style is best for people.

The most interesting part of the article wasn't really reflective of style, it was visually crowded environments. They used the example of supermarkets, and that seems distinct from a visually rich style like the grandparent comment's home or Neo Gothic cathedrals. Being in a forest is visually crowded, too, but I'd expect it has the opposite effect the study measured. I think the fractal dimension of the detail, if they correlated it with the degree of distress, would be a factor.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Very rich people do prefer cluttered homey interiors. The ideal is plush, showy, old, and ostentatious. This is the saloon at Eaton Hall, owned by the Duke of Westminster, one of the richest UK billionaires from one of the oldest families. This particular room isn't particularly cluttered, but the living spaces really aren't minimal at all.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS0H4Sp...

Minimalism is more of an (upper) middle class thing - doctors, lawyers, architects, software developers. The abstraction and clean lines are cool, rational, aspirational, and controlled.

Middle class people on the artier end of the spectrum are more likely to be maximalist, with bright colours, busy wallpapers, huge shelves of books, plants, and such.

Poor people need a lot of stuff because they have to hoard things in case they break. Mass market products are usually low quality, mass-produced from cheap materials, and not very well made.

Working class spaces are often chaotic, claustrophobic (because literally small), full of mismatched items and general clutter.

There's a particular kind of upper working class chrome-and-glass look which is its own attempt at minimalism, but doesn't quite get there. It's still chaotic, the spaces are disorganised, but it's very, very clean and shiny. Instead of feeling controlled and expensive it feels sterile.

The startup office look is a mix of minimalism with some maximalist stylings. It's supposed to be informal and "fun", but the big spaces are disorienting and loud, and the bright colours and lines are distracting.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

If the thesis was true, we'd expect rich people who will never be compelled to move against their will, or to move into less space, would prefer cluttered homey interiors, and poor people would prefer sparse & modern. In reality, the biggest boosters of modern decor are rich people.

Are you sure? Maybe some of them are, but it's also quite typical of rich people to live in a refurbished 19th century home with ornate mouldings, antique furniture, bookshelves, rugs, paintings, and a large amount of carefully curated "clutter". While working-class people almost universally move towards minimalism when they renovate, with the rich it's much more divided.

[andai]

I saw this comic once, of a big empty hall. "Only the rich can afford this much nothing."

I walked past a bank later and it looked almost exactly the same. (I guess that's where the money is!)

[mghackerlady]

Imagine how big banks would have to be if they were required to be able to store an amount equivalent to amount of imaginary money they store

[yubblegum]

> I am skeptical this is the origin of modern decor. The trend away from ornamentation, toward simplicity, flatness, etc in design goes back several generations and transcends interior design.

You should be. Modernism is an ideological design response: the aesthetics of the machine age and utilitarianism.

OP's opinion is not based on actual design and architecture history and (ironically) appears to be itself an ideological narrative: a posthoc criticism of Modern (yes with cap M) design which itself has its root in conservative reaction against the (asserted, alleged and possibly true) socialist tendencies of the elite social and design circles that gave birth to Modernism. Note, for example, the 'emotional' appeal to long lived in homes, etc.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230103-the-historical-...

[inigyou]

I believe in practice yes. It isn't a planned design choice - it's just a practical consequence that if you are moving around a lot, carrying possessions with you has a much higher cost than if you are staying in the same place. You'll be more averse to accumulating possessions. If you are staying in one place, you only have to reduce your possessions when you start running out of space.

[jodrellblank]

“A rolling stone gathers no moss”, you say?

[bluegatty]

'modernism' is a 20th century design concept.

[mannyv]

Modern decor has been this way since the bauhaus. Saying simplicity transcends interior design makes no sense; it is part of interior design.

The repeating patterns on carpet are an artifact of mass production.

[lofaszvanitt]

It is soulless. Flat surfaces, greys and pastel colours everywhere. Brrr.

[smallnix]

Trends, status signalling?

[pishpash]

Ornate and simple alternate back and forth in a reactionary preference cycle in history. We may be in a 'simple' phase but there is a nostalgic backlash happening with pre-digital aesthetics, and as evidenced here.

[rr808]

My parents lived in the same house for 40 years, my entire childhood was there. My grandparents (both sets) lived in their house for 50 years. I can't comprehend how Americans keep moving for jobs or to upgrade or to get to a better school district. Surely you want some permanence? Get to know your neighbors?

Edit yes I did move around in my twenties, but that stopped at 30.

[Spooky23]

Remember people marry later if at all so you break the cohort developments of growing up and adulting.

I helped lead my local little league. It’s different than it used to be - it’s pretty typical to have tball parents in their 40s. A group of parents from 20s to 50s aren’t going to hang out, they don’t relate. I’m a late genx, most of my friends parents were in their 30s when I was a little leaguer.

The demise of old line churches is similar. We did CYO basketball in the same parish my wife did. It’s the last of what was 8-10 catholic parishes in my city. And unlike in my youth where you had good mix multigenerational parishioners… the parish survives based on the beneficence of 5-10 people in their late 60s and 70s, with few people rising to behind them. Mainline Protestant parishes are similar. The only growth in religious communities are independent Baptists, which are great but integrate into the broader community differently, because each church mostly stands alone and isn’t part of a bigger system.

[frogperson]

Church groups, or at least an awful lot of them, were co-opted by groups like the Council For National Policy (parent group of the Heritage Foundation). I think a lot of younger folks see through the BS and don't want to send their time listening to hate speech discussed as gospel.

These churches chose thier path, and so did their parishioners.

[YinglingHeavy]

As a Nietzschean it is amusing, this argument that Christianity is losing favor because it is...not moral enough!

Truly our institutions are post-Christianity. The herd morality has out survived Christianity itself. Nietzsche's nightmare

[PsylentKnight]

It’s losing favor because it’s lacking in a lot of ways. The most exhorted virtue in the church is faith, which is just another word for irrationality. So the church often ends up in conflict with reality or even its own doctrine

Its more difficult to maintain this when everyone has a device in their pocket that allows them to access information and people outside their church bubble

[mjevans]

The nightmare is not outgrowing the child version of 'how to morality'. It's moving past it without reaching the enlightenment of being moral because it's the best large scale and long term strategy.

Instead the grown psychopathic children all move for instant gratification and rewards in the now, damn the cost of society and civilization long term.

I want to reach Orville / Star Trek, thank you!

[inigyou]

When you say you want to reach Orville, are you referring to the episode where everyone wears an upvote counter badge? Because I can see that one coming true.

[antonymoose]

What church(es) are you thinking of here exactly? I’ve never heard of any such group in my entire independent Southern Baptist life.

On the contrary, most folks in the 20-40 range are tired of “cafeteria Christian” denominations that pick and chose which parts of scripture to stand by and which go ignore based on ever shifting social trends, whether it be so-called woke churches hosting drag performers or Boomer-tier Endtimes preachers that can’t stop talking about their all expense paid Israeli “pilgrimage.”

[dpark]

> I’ve never heard of any such group in my entire independent Southern Baptist life.

I grew up in the South and distinctly remember the Southern Baptist preachings against interracial marriage based on selective (mis)readings of the Bible, against homosexuality based on selective readings of the Old Testament (pick and choose indeed; hate gays while eating your BBQ pork). I remember the constant calls for boycott of Disney parks because of “gay days”.

I don’t know what it’s like I’m a Southern Baptist church now, but I seriously doubt it’s changed much.

[antonymoose]

Well, that’s quite a bit of baggage to unpack.

In regards to “miscegenation” we have Galatians which largely renders that point moot, highlighting everyone’s love of cherry-picking scripture.

In regards to homosexuality, you have Leviticus, I assume you’re referencing. Given the widespread practice of man-boy relations as famously highlighted by the Spartans and of course recent special military operations in Afghanistan I have an incredibly hard time believing this piece of scripture is at all misinterpreted.

Regarding BBQ, I assume that’s a presence to kosher law and subsequently an attempt at calling hypocrite on the congregation. In that regard we have quite a few pieces of scripture, e.g. in Mark, effectively redefining and negating much of kosher law thereby making that issue moot.

Overall - your assumption around Southern Baptists largely stands. Our last church, my wife had to constantly deal with snide remarks because of her having previously been married to a man that went and overdosed on fentanyl. Meanwhile half the grandparents in the congregation are raising their own grandchildren for the exact same reason…

Which leads to our currently being “unchurched” as they say, because the worst part of Christianity is the other Christians ;)

[mghackerlady]

I find the condemnation of people like me based on a few things in the old testament amusing, because like. You know you're supposed to ignore that right? Are you Jewish? No? Then that covenant doesn't apply

[watwut]

So like, scripture has issue with drag performance? I read bible, actually, and can argue it does not mention it.

That being said, every single denomination picks and chooses. Especially more conservative ones. And in fact, you cant take it all literally and quite a lot is not applicable.

[antonymoose]

You are correct it neither endorses nor denigrates the specific practice. So why then do we have a church hosting the performances? It’s not relevant to the faith at all? Identity politics entered the chat, unfortunately.

Which leads back to my point, there is a hunger for churches that ignore the intentional blend of secular belief systems in any direction.

[beardyw]

> pick and chose which parts of scripture to stand by

OK. Next time you read the parable of the good Samaritan I want you to reframe it as "The Good Drag Queen". That's how you are meant to see it.

[antonymoose]

I read it as a take encouraging me to render aid to anyone in a dire emergency regardless of their background.

[Timwi]

Not sure how to feel about your implication that unmarried people are neither grown up nor adults.

[nradov]

I'm not religious but just looking around it's pretty obvious that many unmarried adults act quite immature (delayed adolescence). Which way the causality runs is harder to determine, but when you're responsible for and accountable to a spouse that forces you to grow up a bit.

[robocat]

> accountable to a spouse that forces you to grow up a bit

Having children forces you, and ~10% of married people don't have kids. In New Zealand, about 50% of kids are born to the unmarried.

As you say, correlation and causation are hard to pick given the selection biases of who chooses to be married, and who your peer group is if you are married.

[yoyohello13]

They are obviously Christian. Christians tend to have a dim view of anyone that doesn't marry and have children (unless they join the clergy).

[znpy]

Most religions do. For example I don’t think islam has a much better view of unmarried and kidless people.

[yoyohello13]

The abrahamic ones for sure.

[mghackerlady]

I don't know where you are, but at least where I am (and from what I remember, it's been a while since I've felt welcome in a place of worship) the church is oftentimes the only place you can find young families. I was raised and mostly interact with Lutherans though, so maybe it's different for other denominations

[cosmic_cheese]

Problem is, unless you happen to live in a relatively wealthy neighborhood, even if you stay put your neighbors and community probably won’t so you still won’t have much permanence.

[marssaxman]

I really don't want permanence, no! I start to feel fidgety and uncomfortable after I've spent too many years in one place. The idea of living in a single house for decades on end sounds like a kind of imprisonment.

I think of Seattle as "home", and once lived there for twenty-three years straight - but I had nine different addresses during that time. I am probably more of a nomad at heart than the average American, but perhaps Americans have more of a nomadic temperament than the average human.

Getting to know your neighbors can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you make a great new friend: sometimes you're stuck with an obstreperous busybody. It can be nice not having to spend your whole life dealing with the same people and the same conflicts.

[kakacik]

Yeah tight communities are blessing, nightmare or both. Good luck with privacy, some people are nosy by default or simply self-centered... weirdos to be polite, gossip, looking down on differences, hard to integrate for newcomers, and one has to conform to unspoken rules, like them or not. Not exactly feeling of proper freedom, is it.

If you get into beef with your neighbor for something which is trivial over long time, now you are stuck with an asshole next door for next 30-50 years.

Its not just US, we moved in Switzerland from very cosmopolitan and international Geneva to small village in wineyards and all this applies at least as much.

[ip26]

You describe it like it’s some kind of a treadmill chasing new. But if you have kids at 35, they start school when you’re 40.. were you thinking about the quality of the neighborhood schools when you bought your house at 25?

Or suppose you meet your spouse when you are 30, after you bought a house.

There’s inherently much less moving-around if you get married at 18 and have kids straight away - the plan is settled from the start.

[greygoo222]

The world is so big, why spend 40 years in a single place?

[znpy]

Lay down roots, be part of a community, have meaningful connections.

My parents live in southern Italy, in the same small town my mother is from and the small town my father is from is like 5-6 km far.

Every time there is some kind of event (eg: somebody’s parents passing away) it so hearth-warming to see people come together and try and be close to people they’ve known all their life (60+ years).

I moved to a large town nowadays for work and i have a bunch of superficial connections, my peers lament pretty much the same.

I can see why somebody would like to stay 40 years in the same place.

[inigyou]

As with many things, you can go broad, or you can go deep. Not both. You can go one and then the other.

I expect society is best with a mix of both types of people. It usually is.

[mghackerlady]

Oftentimes the impermanence is for a chance of that later permanence. Some people do achieve it, but with the economy and world as a whole right now it's becoming rarer to be able to settle down somewhere

[xyzelement]

Is it really an American thing? Every company's London office is filled with Germans, French, Italians and polaks/Russian. How'd they get there

[StefanBatory]

I am very interested in why you both chose to single Poles out with this, used lowercase AND used slur here.

> and polaks

[rationalist]

Unless OP speaks Polish, it does appear to be a mispelling of an offensive term.

> In Polish, "Polak" simply means a Polish man (with "Polka" meaning a Polish woman).

> In English, the spelling "Polack" (and its plural "Polacks") is an old borrowing from Polish, but today it is generally considered a derogatory or offensive ethnic slur for Polish people

[jacobolus]

Housing has gotten much more expensive in many places, and jobs less stable.

[SoftTalker]

I think there's a lot of unappreciated benefits in "staying put." Of course if you're living in a bad situation that might not be true, and it might not be good for your career or for other material reasons, but it can be good for your mental health. My parents owned one house, and we never moved. I grew up there and I still own it. I don't live there currently but every time I am in that house I'm calm, relaxed, and comfortable almost immediately. It's nothing fancy, just a normal ranch house, but it's very familiar and full of memories.

[tekne]

This explains a lot... I feel bad when I think about staying put. Forward always feels better. It's like one of the fundamental axes, I guess.

[Insanity]

This resonates with me. I enjoy being at my grandparents’ home. And it’s exactly as you mentioned, if I would describe all the stuff in the living room it’d be called “cluttered”. Yet it feels “homey” and I feel pretty relaxed whenever I sit there to read a book.

And then on my side, for the past 15 years I moved to a new place about every 2-3 years. Never really invested in making it feel “homey” because I’m not sure how much space I’d have in the next place I move to.

[bear141]

I see where you are coming from and I think this is an interesting observation. Especially when talking about companies and people moving apartments every year.

I grew up in a house full of the clutter that you describe as comforting, but for me it felt smothering. I recently inherited the house I grew up in and now have it set up much less cluttered. I don’t plan to live anywhere else anytime soon, but for me the lack of clutter and clear spaces are much more comforting.

I am definitely not a fan of crazy colors or patterns or bad lighting either though.

[ErroneousBosh]

> It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice.

You see the same thing with cars. People choose to buy (or more commonly lease!) a car for a few years and before they've even decided to buy it they're planning to sell it. This is why there are so many sad grey cars on the road - pick a colour that's easy to sell! Don't get anything too wild, it might not sell! What if you can't sell it because it's red or blue?!!? Don't go too crazy with that very pale blue tinted grey, they might not be able to sell it for as much and you won't get much from the leasing company!

There's a guy in my town who has a Porsche 992, it's only a few years old. He bought it as his retirement present to himself when he packed in his job at the start of COVID. It has all the options, and it has custom paint.

It is what I can only describe as Budget-Conscious Prosthetic Limb beige.

That kind of pinky-beige colour for NHS hearing aid plastic.

It cost him 1500 quid to even get it mixed, thousands extra to have it sprayed that colour.

"But what if it doesn't sell?" people say to him, "What if people don't like the colour?"

He doesn't care, he's going to drive it for the rest of his life. It'll be someone else's problem to sell once he dies.

[bluGill]

I'm told that because so many cars are the ugly gray that cars have color are selling better nowadays. It may be only a minority that want color, but that minority is willing to pay for it and they look at their choices and your car is the only one they can go for.

I don't normally care about color myself, but I hate thr color my car is enough that I'm wondering if I should spend the several couple thousand dollars to put a decent coat of paint on it.

[mlrtime]

A 911 is sort of an exception to the rule. 95%+ of 911s are custom ordered by vs a common brand where the manufacturer is making them in batches with common colors/options for dealerships.

Even farther on the spectrum is Lamborghini where 100% are all custom made. You can't buy one from a dealership [new] that hasn't been custom ordered.

Someone will buy that 911 if/when he decides to sell it and have no problems getting a good price.

[inigyou]

I don't need to drive, luckily, but I heard that cars cost so much these days that you really have to be planning to get back as much money as possible. Cars cost what shitty houses used to cost, even adjusted for inflation.

[ErroneousBosh]

> you really have to be planning to get back as much money as possible

Why? Just buy a car, and drive it.

[sandworm101]

It is old money v new money. Old money has things. If they want to go skiing, they have a set of skis in the garage and a family cabin near the slopes. If they want to go fishing, they have a boat ready on a trailer. New money isnt about having thing but having power to acquire, to congure up things as needed. New money doesn't own skis. New money rents them. New money doesnt have a boat parked behind thier garage, they have an empty (minimalist) garage and will buy a boat a month before the trip, having it delivered to the lake by someone who owns work gloves. Old money collects a household of things over decades. New money leaves a trail of discarded junk that was used once and disposed of shortly thereafter.

[nicbou]

A home you inhabit for a long time molds to your day-to-day life. The objects you surround yourself with are not a design choice, but a series of practical solutions to everyday problems. A house becomes a home when you absent-mindedly put down your favourite teacup, and it falls on the coaster you put there five years ago. There's a pillow that makes your reading chair fit just right. The art on the walls was curated over years, and each piece means something.

Modern decor is what happens when you just go on Pinterest and outsource taste for a place you don't own and don't expect to live in for long. It feels sterile because it does not represent any specific person, only an algorithmically-designed aesthetic built from off-the-shelf components.

I help immigrants move to Germany, and I think that people only become Berliners when they can put their own art on the walls. It means that they finally get a sense of permanence, and have a space of their own that they want to invest in. It changes your whole perception of the city you live in.

[mghackerlady]

On the other hand, I do think selecting some things purely for design reasons makes things better. A random knicknack you don't need but fits aesthetically is good. Also, selecting things you know you need like furniture to fit a specific style is good if you the style brings you joy

[mgfist]

> The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did

The theory I subscribe to is a few fold:

1) People like to buy "generic" homes that are easier to renovate/personalize 2) But then they don't end up personalizing, because they're afraid to tank it's market value 3) Thus homes stay boring and generic

[alehlopeh]

The article is about office decor, not home decor. While I don't love "modern decor," I don't think offices are meant to feel comforting like a home owned for generations.

[pishpash]

If anything, offices are likely designed to not feel comfortable so you are forced to focus on your screen and work. Otherwise, rooms were more comfortable than cubicles, cubicles were more comfortable than open benches, open benches will be more comfortable than whatever AI-adjacent abomination surely to come...

[skyberrys]

Really curious to imagine what these AI-adjacent abominations could be. Some sort of people conveyor belt we have to work on while rotating past other humans to achieve maximum 'collaboration' perhaps? Offices built into semi trucks so we get picked up and crammed together with our laptops and screens? When will it stop!

[dfc]

What design trends can be attributed to people's desire to pick up and move at a moment notice?

[inigyou]

Not having bookcases full of books, for example.

My dad's lived in the same house for over 15 years and probably expected as much when he moved in. He has a room with old books covering the walls, which he never reads. If he moved house every year, he'd have to throw out or donate the collection.

[nly]

You can...move books.

[_the_inflator]

I agree with you.

Victimhood par excellence: "My brain is a 200+ IQ machine desperately waiting for input. However, I cannot feed it! It is the walls, I guess."

It should be legally enforced to place every author's smartphone usage statistics into such articles. No interior design on earth can compensate for 40 hours TikTok usage per week.

And we didn't mention other streaming services as well.

It might be the smartphone usage as well as time spend.

[agumonkey]

I see strange market forces where companies need to be trendy, so they absorb what's in the air, and then people kinda have no choice but to buy it. Nobody really wanted to but it materializes.

Around me every house now has tall anthracite fully closed fences. It's gloomy as hell, streets went from cute garden with wood fences to lock-down mode in a few years. It's all the same model, all the same vibe..

[ajsnigrutin]

A lot of the new designs are actually practical.... be it striped carpets or patterned bus seats, they're designed to hide stains and wear. If eg. bus seats were made from white fabric, no one would want to sit in them after a month or two of use, same for eg. carpets in places with many people.

[mike_hock]

The article also doesn't touch on whether visually cluttered "traditional" decor is better for people affected by those conditions.

I found the office in the picture quite pleasant to look at. Not comforting and homey but suitable as a work environment.

[qwertyuiop_]

Spot on ! Just watch Columbo and tell me how you feel after observing the decor.

https://tubitv.com/series/300006728/columbo

[INTPenis]

Depends on your perspective. Yes I grew up with that type of decor, but it doesn't comfort me today because all I can think of are all the knocks and crannies where dust and pollen doesn't get cleaned out of.

[glimshe]

I feel the opposite. I find old homes heavy, cluttered (as you said) and oppressive. I love clean and modern environments.

[KoolKat23]

I've come to realize clutter makes me anxious. This is a quite common for people. Sadly I still own lots of shit.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Even those homes these days are all LED that flicker during saccades.

[ericmay]

> It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice.

Yes, but it's deeper than that. Two broad reasons, though your point here is a good one.

1. We don't, particularly in the west, have the skills, shops/craftsmen, or access to resources to make things like we used to. It's a positive network effect where prices go up, folks don't do the work anymore, and so prices go up, and things get more unaffordable, and so forth until there's only a handful of folks anywhere that can build the furniture, decor, or houses that you allude to. Companies can't make this stuff and as they chase never ending globalized supply chains and increasingly fewer commodities or natural resources they market and sell plainer and plainer things - modernist styles and modernist architecture. With so many people in the world competing for the same products and resources, it's incredibly expensive to build anything "real" or with much detail or thought. So companies just cheap out and create surrogate products which nobody is ever happy with.

2. The changes we see in style can be attributed to changes in politics and civilization. Who we are and what we think of ourselves. It's bad or even politically dangerous to build ornate buildings or purchase expensive or ornate pieces for your home. How could you build a beautiful building when there are people starving?!?! (you see a version of this with rocket companies - how can Jeff Bezos spend his money launching rockets when Social Security is underfunded!!?!?)

Any sufficiently famous building or person who liked nice shit was a "colonizer" and "bad person" in some form or because of some argument and then of course over time folks just hide their wealth (stealth wealth, millionaire next door) and we pride ourselves on appearing poor, acting poor, and naturally, we create poor civilizations without much to aspire to. When was the last time you wore a suit and tie? Better yet, who in your town can even make a suit? Who is going to die for strip malls and parking lots? Who wants to invest in their neighborhood when you know instinctively it's just a house and it's not something you will really pass down to your children (they will just sell that suburban home you have). Americans in particular spend thousands annually to travel to countries in Europe for example, and to visit their gardens and nice buildings, which themselves are vestiges of an age when western civilization aspired to more, and why do they only do that instead of investing in their own gardens and making their own nice places for people to visit? We do this of course to some extent - it's big country after all, but those who understand this and why it's important are fewer and further between.

[michaelchisari]

The first point is solid. The loss of craftsmanship means that the labor cost of those who remain has skyrocketed. That's an irony of devaluing labor is that those who hold on to their craft end up in very high demand.

That said, you overestimate how much "colonizer" discourse informs the average suburban home or modern office environment. That discourse isn't even particularly dominant amongst the left (often clowned as "third-worldist", reductionist or class denialism).

The average leftists apartment or home has more in common with your great-grandfather's house than stark, modern minimalism.

[ericmay]

The "colonizer" rhetoric is just part of it, but it's more so as a piece of the puzzle that shows of an overall change in how we perceive ourselves and how we report on things in the public sphere.

It's unquestionable that ostentatious displays of wealth are met with revulsion and derision, therefore we don't show those displays. The downstream impact is that the masses have nothing to aspire to or look up to in this specific context of craftsmanship. Again, when was the last time "you" wore a suit? Was it tailored? Do you only wear it at weddings? Do you buy your clothing from Costco/Kirkland? Do you find yourself in the fast food line at Chik-fil-a or driving across town to Buc-ee's in your Jeep? These kinds of consumerist behaviors are good and accepted. If you tell someone you only eat at tasting menus or high end restaurants or something instead of those being celebrated as good you'll be met with incredulity or even be made fun of "you're so fancy" "ugh if only I could afford that", and then it devolves into mass-market "experiences" and so forth. (As you read the rest of this post remember that I'm critiquing capitalism here as well).

Because Wimbledon is ongoing and the ladies championship was today, how many complain about the players being required to wear all-white? How many have complained once the champion's dance was re-established? Do you think it's silly or stupid? You're part of the problem! It's considered classism - but without it, you get sterilization. Reduction to the lowest common denominator.

In general, leftist ideologies, so think communism and other sympathies, result in minimalist architecture and decor and art, because grand displays of wealth or even the concept of "rank" with respect to members of society evoke royalty, "white European male", and "let them eat cake". To flaunt your wealth or aspire to be part of a country club or to invent new social organizations and elite activities is to be on the receiving end of the social hammer. You can't have nice stuff because that goes against the doctrine. I'm painting in broad strokes here, but I think this is accurate. It's no accident that all of the best buildings were built under royalist regimes, monarchies, and more.

And because of the disgust and vitriol and crabs pulling other crabs down as they try to escape the bucket, now we are just left with wealthy losers who have forgotten their noblesse oblige.

> That discourse isn't even particularly dominant amongst the left (often clowned as "third-worldist", reductionist or class denialism).

I think this is just flatly false. You've probably just seen it so much and it has become so common to you that you've become less sensitive to it. Leftists in particular are very in-tune with class warfare. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, and I'm paraphrasing, culture wars are a distraction from the real war, class war. I see stuff like this all the time: https://www.amazon.com/American-Magnet-War-Class-Text/dp/B09... .

[watwut]

The masses wear colorful t-shirts with selections of cool pictures and variety of decorated cloth.

If anything, suit is boring minimalist choice, every man looks exactly like the man next to him.

The leftist ideology in women leads to colorful hair styles, even more variety of clothing cause they integrate in unusual styles.

[ericmay]

> If anything, suit is boring minimalist choice, every man looks exactly like the man next to him.

It's less about the suit itself - I don't mean to imply everyone should wear the same thing. It's about the perception around it and the moaning one does when it comes to trying to present yourself in society. There's a "I don't need to impress anyone" attitude, which I'm certainly sympathetic to, but I think it is heading in the wrong direction.

It's like when you talk to a pickleball player and you ask them if they play tennis. The typical answer is "no" "that's so hard" "too much running" - it's the undercurrent of not trying and not having high standards that I take issue with. (Nothing against pickleball, truly)

[watwut]

People wear stuff to impress others without wearing suits. Suits are not even impressive looking as everyone looks the same. People feel uncomfortable and out of place in them for a host of reasons, but "I don't want to be impressive" is a rare one.

I really do not associate suits with anything you wrote here - they dont make you impressive, they dont show personalization or care about how you look like, they are just a thing you put on in rare social situation and then you feel hot. An average metal guy with a big hairstyle is putting a lot more effort into looking impressive then someone who just wears the suit.

> It's like when you talk to a pickleball player and you ask them if they play tennis. The typical answer is "no" "that's so hard" "too much running" - it's the undercurrent of not trying and not having high standards that I take issue with. (Nothing against pickleball, truly)

Is that an actual thing pickleball players and fans say or something you projected on them, because they don't play the proper tennis? Why the need to turn casual sport and exercise into a test of will and standards?

I just dont get this example either. Why is it wrong to pick a sport you can play with friends right away, have fun and then stick to it?

[mghackerlady]

The "leftist ideology" in women leads to colorful hair because not only is it cool looking, but it keeps away the kind of men who are repulsed by things like womens rights

[ericmay]

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In communist and other leftist authoritarian ideologies and there are of course different degrees and expressions of this, but you typically have to engage in mass conformity, whereas democracies with free markets and free expression of ideas and allow for folks to style themselves outside of the norm.

It's one of those things that unfortunately popular culture has become confused about. Free markets, property rights, and free expression (as examples), which are not leftist, are the cultural mechanism which allows and encourages individuality. In societies where those things are not valued, free expression for example in communist societies, women are more oppressed and that's arguably by definition. Even at the economic level, capitalist economies and free market economies permit worker-owned collectives, whereas communism destroys and disallows private ownership of the means of production (and typically property rights in general). Free markets are more permissive and more, well, free. Leftist economic systems aren't because they are unnatural and require forced cooperation.

[ClumsyPilot]

> We don't, particularly in the west, have the skills, shops/craftsmen, or access to resources

It’s worse than that, most consumers don’t even know what good looks like any more. We are much more restricted and maybe lower variety of experience.

You could serve half the consumers rat meat instead of beef and they wouldn’t know the difference.

> The changes we see in style can be attributed to changes in politics and civilization. Who we are and what we think of ourselves.

There is something to this even if the way this is expressed is clumsy

[inigyou]

"colonizer" has a specific meaning, it doesn't mean "someone you don't like"

[AlexandrB]

In theory, yes. In practice it's just used as an epithet against specific groups. For instance, you almost never hear folks from South America being called colonizers despite how Spain and Portugal carved up that continent, meanwhile Jews are frequently called colonizers of their own ancestral homeland.