Convert your living room – a home improvement
From the earliest days in the United States (USA) until the 1970s, much of family activity was centered in the living room of a home. Also known as “the reception room”, the housewives took guests there as soon as they entered the house. This room contained the best seats and furniture. There, the curtains hung delicately from the windows. A small piano could reside in the room. A vase of fresh cut flowers and a bowl filled with nuts or mints can rest on the coffee table. “Get something to eat while I go get coffee in the kitchen,” a housewife might say to guests.
Kept immaculately clean, the sitting room’s location allowed the housewife to entertain guests without them straying too far into the dwelling (where the masses lurked). A housewife can comfortably engage in polite and interesting conversation and make a good impression on guests in the living room. That place, the most formal, coat and tie room in the house, exuded sophistication and cleanliness and wordlessly identified the family as someone ascending in social status (or not). But housing changed in the US in the 1970s when people wanted to express themselves, have more choice, and cared less what guests thought of them.
They cared more about setting up their home with an imaginative and useful living space. Still, even today, most newly built houses, as well as those built before the 1970s, have living rooms. However, the family room (where the radio once sat, then the TV sat, and now the widescreen TV mounts to one wall) pretty much centers both the family and their guests. Entertainment in the digital age, not just conversation, requires access to digital content (a coat and tie is neither necessary nor desired).
Homeowners began remodeling their living rooms into home offices, a special room with a desk, computer workstation, and online access. Then the computer workstation evolved to become the source of computer games, and many old living rooms and offices became online game rooms. Now, neither computing nor gaming require isolation in a room. A tablet or laptop enables mobile computing and a smartphone enables online gaming.
Where does this leave the old living room? Some people put a bar there, complete with a pool table. For others, this has been converted into the guest bedroom (enclosed with an access door to a full bathroom). Sometimes pets get the room to themselves, with their bed, toys, a hundes bar (a dog bar with water and kibble), and an access door located at the base of the front door. Any of these ideas makes more sense than a living room devoid of life, a place haunted by ghostly bugs and dustbins. #tag1writer