Contents - At Home

Today's lecture was  about the exploration and ideologies of home. We talked about the class system in the 50's and the ideas about class within the home. This is the scale we where presented with:

• Being seen by others to do/ have.
• Being identified by others as doing/ having.
• Being considered better than others who cannot do/ have.

I was quite interested in the way decorating our homes has evolved over the years. In Victorian times we use to display our belongings and it was seen as a sign of wealth and class, but now we are constantly wanting storage to hide away our possessions. Ikea are a great example of companies promoting storage to hie the 'clutter' within our homes. We discussed how our need for more storage reflects the fact that we must have more possessions which is a reflection of the mass increase of consumerism. We also discussed how our homes are a 'keep sake' for our memories and that we use our homes to store these.

In the seminar we delved further into the idea of memories within the home, how we can hoard items and does 'Tidy home' mean a 'Tidy mind'. Also is 'clutter' just things that are out of place?

I am really enjoying these sessions as they are allowing me to think more conceptually about day to day things that I would not usually think about.