Home clutter/decor in movies v Real Life?

[TopHatFox]

A lot of the movies on Netflix for example, feature rooms with beautiful rugs, wood floors, wall decor, and everything being just so.

But...when I’ve actually visited friends apartments or houses, it’s usually sparse or poorly decorated or more often cluttered af. Same deal with peoples’ offices and cubicles.

Is that more or less accurate or do peoples’ homes look like magazines? I’d imagine the magazine to disorganized-shithole spectrum falls along class lines.

Just a random thought. It’s so interesting that a lot of programming on mainstream platforms are wholly unnatainable for almost all people, but yet, there they are, for the common people to compare their life to and to be compared to.

[BRUTE]

movies are not like real life. in other news, water is wet.

[7Wannabe5]

Kind of depends on how you define "class." Wealth is by no means well associated with aesthetic judgment, except perhaps to the extent that one can hire another person to make those decisions for you. Many homes are over-decorated and otherwise sub-functional.

[Campitor]

Most people are lazy thinkers and those who are not only have so much mental energy to devote to matters they consider trivial; home decor can fall into this category.

I find that very few people put any considerable thought into creating a coherent decorating strategy. Like mixing imperial, art deco, and shaker design elements. And even a sparsely decorated house can look very beautiful if the furniture is picked carefully, placed strategically, and the lighting carefully considered.

[jacob]

The pursuit of aesthetics as a high value is connected with a well-developed/driving Fi (introverted feeling), so mainly the FP types with the INFP and ISFP being those with the strongest fascination with interior decorating; ENFP and ESFP following. As noted above, other types don't care as much which of course can be annoying to those who do care. (Just like the forum population likely feel frustration with all the inefficiency and suboptimal choices they see in other people ... a natural outcome because those other people genuinely don't prioritize optimization, etc.). As 7 noted, for most people, decorations just tend to pile up as people just add w/o subtracting. Another picture, another nail in the wall. More is better. It's only those who care who develop some kind of system (an aesthetic) where there is some kind of active management. Other humans just get sentimentally attached to their decorations. Aren't decorations also part of Kondo's hardest category?

A bigger difference can be observed when people actually put an effort into it.

Almost everybody declutters/cleans their house in anticipation of visitors (other than maybe close relatives). You can tell by the level of clutter when visiting vs the clutter on selfies or other informal pictures, etc. Of course there's a baseline that each individual can deal with. Again, some are far more comfortable with piles of clutter than others. I've observed a strong correlation with parents' habits. (And the occasional exception that confirms the rule: hoarder parents resulting in a minimalist child). Same deal as with diets. Fat parents tend to have fat children because the diet and exercise habits are normalized. Vice versa. There are also people who think that decluttered houses look too sterile (like Ikea catalogs) if they show no sign of being lived in.

Not very many people put effort into deliberate decorating ... basically because only the FP types know how to appreciate it, so it's like learning how to speak Esperanto or Klingon: Pretty cool when you run into another one, but sufficiently uncommon that it's nerds-only.

As for what goes on on TV. Apparently, the average sitcom portrays a socioeconomic standard at the 66% level or thereabouts. This coincidentally is also the socioeconomic level where people don't experience/project increased level of happiness. See Easterlin paradox. Perhaps it is not a coincidence.

[EdithKeeler]

Who cares. Make your house look the way you want it. Not everyone cares what their house looks like; for some people, a house is just a place to sleep and store their stuff; for others, it's important that they create an environment they like. That may be a magazine spread or a weird BoHo mishmash or something else.

My house is a mish-mash of stuff, but I like it. My guests say they like it. I buy a lot of stuff at estate sales--I like antiques, stuff with some history. I have a lot of art. Some people have none. To each his own.

People's homes look how they look. I've been in homes that look like magazines, and I've been in homes that look like an episode of "Hoarders."

[Frita]

@EdithKeeler. Agreed, to each his or her own! Our styles are similar.

[prognastat]

From my experience in real life most people tend to not think about interior decorating very much ending up with either almost no decorations as they simply never get them or far too many as they just keep accumulating them with little sense for how it all fits together.

There have been a few that could be in a catalog, but those are pretty rare.