pandemic is changing the way parents view their homes

Caught a bit about this on the radio. The important bits:

They want to re-do their kitchens now, because they're actually having to stay home and cook and are noticing the shortcomings.

They want a little more room.

But most importantly, a lot of parents interviewed who had "open concept" floor plans are now wanting homes with separate rooms, complete with walls and doors. The interviewer put it very politely, but it came down to the fact that parents aren't used to spending this much time with their kids and are dying to have some actual separate rooms.

My condo is somewhat "open concept" in that the dining room and living room kinda run together, and the kitchen doesn't have a door. BUT...there's only two of us, and it's a small place. It beats me why people buy big mega-houses with apartment/condo style layouts.

It seems damn near impossible to find a house of any size that doesn't have at least a partial "open plan". Maybe people were not objecting until now because most of them had super busy lives and spent very little time with their family members. Now that they have to stay home with them they realize some privacy features would be nice.

I guess I'm ahead of breeders on figuring things out. No surprise there. I like cooking so the kitchen has always mattered to me, probably more than any other room in the house.

European houses generally have doors. The advantage of doors is that it allows you to isolate smells and sounds. If I'm cooking something strongly scented, or if I burn something, I close the kitchen door so that the smell doesn't permeate the entire apartment. When I was living with someone there was the option for one person to be in the living room, for instance watching a movie, without disturbing the other because the door could be closed. Of course most of the time the doors are kept open, but there's always the potential to close them. The only time I've ever wished for an open kitchen/living room was when cooking for friends and wanting to socialize at the same time, when the kitchen was too small to have a little table in it for them to sit at. But I'd call that a too-small kitchen, as I'd rather solve the problem by having the table in the kitchen.

Based on my experience of having visited a number of homes in the US and Europe, US homes tend to be bigger, except in very crowded cities like New York. (And if you go to east Asia, you get even smaller apartments than in Europe.) So those people who are griping about wanting more space are probably already in huge places but just not using the space effectively. If you have a lot of crap, of course the home will feel crowded, especially if people are leaving that crap just lying around instead of putting it away. And of course if you have people in the house who have never learned to use inside voices or listen to music/movies with headphones....well, yes, you are going to think you need more space, when what you actually need are manners.

I hate the open plan concept in a house. Fine for apartments, but a 2500sqft house does not need to be open concept. And the reasons people give for wanting an open plan are so temporary. They want to keep an eye on their kids while they’re cooking, which is understandable, but that’s for young kids. I’m a few years, you’ll have kids that don’t need to be supervised constantly. And for entertaining? How often are you really entertaining and why do you want people milling in your kitchen while you’re trying to cook?

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paragon schnitzophonic
And for entertaining? How often are you really entertaining and why do you want people milling in your kitchen while you’re trying to cook?

Well, I like to have friends over for dinner a couple of times a month, if not once a week, and it's a social activity so we chat while I cook. But it is essential to have a small table and some chairs so they aren't milling about, but sitting with a drink.

But I guess I do it a lot more often than most people with kids.

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yurble
So those people who are griping about wanting more space are probably already in huge places but just not using the space effectively. If you have a lot of crap, of course the home will feel crowded, especially if people are leaving that crap just lying around instead of putting it away. And of course if you have people in the house who have never learned to use inside voices or listen to music/movies with headphones....well, yes, you are going to think you need more space, when what you actually need are manners.

And this is exactly what I was thinking. Re-think how you use the space you have, and how you conduct yourself around the people in that space. That will go miles toward improving the situation.

American houses grew immensely after WW2, but those built within the past 30 years tend to be ridiculously big. I am skeptical that many of the parents they talked to on the radio bit were in small houses.

It's also cheaper to build a house with open concept. You don't need to build many interior walls and doors. It's basically a large, great room and upstairs bedrooms.

We have a 1924 built little Tudor cottage, with doors, little archways and textured plaster walls, ceilings and crown mouldings. It's lovely and cozy. I couldn't imagine living in an open concept house, because you'd have no privacy other than your bedroom.

The house my roommates and I live in got built back in 1947 so it isn't quite like a modern house. The kitchen was separated from the living room by a pair of walls and has two doorways without doors. The house's 'personality' is so distinct we call it the 5th roommate. From the street, it looks like those little 'granny houses' that pepper this neighborhood, but it has four bedrooms, and it is very long. Two of the bedrooms are modern and typical, but the two in the front looked like they were built before the '50s.

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Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

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paragon schnitzophonic
I hate the open plan concept in a house. Fine for apartments, but a 2500sqft house does not need to be open concept. And the reasons people give for wanting an open plan are so temporary. They want to keep an eye on their kids while they’re cooking, which is understandable, but that’s for young kids. I’m a few years, you’ll have kids that don’t need to be supervised constantly. And for entertaining? How often are you really entertaining and why do you want people milling in your kitchen while you’re trying to cook?

Me too. I've thought open concept was puke worthy since I was a kid. The noise carries. The smells and mess of a kitchen are something I would want to hide. Who wants to dine staring at a dirty kitchen? Some older houses have doors for every room and some have french doors for larger spaces. I love that because it offers options. You could always keep the doors open or remove them from the hinges to open up the space a bit without it being open concept. I've seen a beautiful option with glass pane french doors that feels open but at the same time provides a boundary.

Now, if a kitchen, living room and dining room are all tiny separate rooms I can see the advantage of converting them into one open space. But other than that I hate open concept and love doors and hallways. If I open my front door I want an entry or hallway to be seen, no open view into a living room.

Open concept is another one of those hopeless fads that will go the way of the do do in a few years. Doors and hallways will prevail again!

The entryway is one thing I like about my lil condo. You can kinda see the end of the living room if you lean way to the right. But really you're in the front hall.

I'm kind of hoping this will be the death of open office plans. Those are hell.

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I'm kind of hoping this will be the death of open office plans. Those are hell.

I would take a cube farm any day. Conference rooms/gathering spaces if you need them, but privacy while working.

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bell_flower

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I'm kind of hoping this will be the death of open office plans. Those are hell.

I would take a cube farm any day. Conference rooms/gathering spaces if you need them, but privacy while working.

Don't most offices have separators so you don't have to look at co-irkers while working?

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Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

no matter the design, childed houses at this point in time are little hell holes.
and closing doors does not deter shitty, clingy, snotty little buggers. they can't help it, it's the stage of development, but after 8 hours of 'mommymommymommymommy' i'd be ready to drop kick the bastard out a window

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

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The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

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twocents
no matter the design, childed houses at this point in time are little hell holes.
and closing doors does not deter shitty, clingy, snotty little buggers. they can't help it, it's the stage of development, but after 8 hours of 'mommymommymommymommy' i'd be ready to drop kick the bastard out a window

Fuck, I wouldn't last that long!

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

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Don't most offices have separators so you don't have to look at co-irkers while working?

I can only speak for myself. I work for a large (Fortune 50 sized) entity. My employer built a new "modern" facility that was deployed in 2019. It has sectioned seating, but the partitions do not extend past desk level, so that is why a cube farm would be desirable because there is no privacy. Everyone can see everyone else.

Part of the "modern" thinking was "communal workspaces" and "let's all work like Google and Facebook" or what they thought was Facebook. The old building did not have enough conference room spaces or training spaces. Guess what, there are still not enough conference spaces--they cheaped out and made the work spaces communal and they thought that solved the problem.

Between when the building was designed and built, the thinking has changed yet again. Now the thought is "buildings are expensive" and the future will be teleworking to the maximum extent possible. Desks will become "hotel cubes" when you come in to the office. That and "anybody should be able to work from anywhere" are the prevailing ideas now. For the past five years my supervisors have not been on site with me, and neither have most of my co-workers.

All of this has made communication and working very challenging. It also means one is on the phone or computer all day long and it sucks.

Really glad I'm on the home stretch.

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bell_flower

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Don't most offices have separators so you don't have to look at co-irkers while working?

I can only speak for myself. I work for a large (Fortune 50 sized) entity. My employer built a new "modern" facility that was deployed in 2019. It has sectioned seating, but the partitions do not extend past desk level, so that is why a cube farm would be desirable because there is no privacy. Everyone can see everyone else.

Yeah, open-plan offices were all the rage because they are cheaper, and some management guru decided they would enable serendipitous connections between people. In reality, people with nothing better to do wander around all day interrupting people who are trying to work, and the noise level is far too high for concentration. Around 2006 I was working in a company that moved from a nice old building with offices into a "modern" open-plan office. They put the computer people right next to the coffee machine, so all day we had to listen to the sales people yakking, which was irritating and unproductive. Plus that feeling of having your back exposed, and random people walking up behind you if you put on headphones to get away from the noise...

The only thing worse would have been hot desking, but fortunately they didn't take the final step towards insanity.

There's now research showing just how horrible open office plans are, but it looks like companies are continuing to build them because they're cheap.

I have a small office to myself now and it's much better. I like working from home even more, though, because I don't have any distractions here.

When I started work as a computer programmer in 1982, the offices were open desk. After a while we were put into cubicles with changed configurations for every reorganization. And now they're going back to open office? I preferred cubicles. I retired in 2004.