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From the earliest times in the United States (US), up until the 1970s, much family activity centered around the living room of a home. Also known as “the reception room,” housewives would bring 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 freshly cut flowers and a bowl filled with nuts or mints can rest on the coffee table. “Have something to eat while I go get coffee in the kitchen,” a housewife might say to guests.
Kept spotlessly clean, the location of the living room allowed the housewife to entertain guests without them wandering too far into the dwelling (where the masses lurked). A housewife can comfortably strike up a polite and interesting conversation and make a good impression on guests in the living room. This place, the most formal, coat-and-tie room in the house, exuded sophistication and cleanliness and wordlessly identified the family as someone rising in social status (or not). But housing changed in the US in the 1970s when people wanted to express themselves, have more options, and cared less about what guests thought of them.
They were more concerned with setting up their home with imaginative and useful living space. Still, even today, most newly built homes, as well as those built before the 1970s, have living rooms. Yet the family room (where the radio once sat, then the TV sat, and now the widescreen TV mounts to a 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 not necessary or 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 former living rooms and offices became online arcades. Now neither computing nor gaming requires 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 up there, complete with a pool table. For others, this has become the guest bedroom (enclosed with a door to access a full bathroom). Sometimes pets get the room to themselves, complete 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 ghosts of insects and dustbins. #label1writer