How much of the house was off limits?

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Accadius@reddit

The attic which was basically just a small crawlspace accessed through a small door in the hallway ceiling. I peaked up there one time ant there was like a 3” thick layer of dust up there. We had too many people for the size of the house to have unused rooms.

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FIREnV@reddit

I grew up this way! 100%. And I'm absolutely doubled-over at your "tragic news" comment. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh at that, but it's a hilarious and flawless description.

I'm trying hard to NOT have my house be like what you have described. It's not easy because I like things to be tidy. But houses are meant to be LIVED in so I am trying to chillax about not having my home look like a model home 24/7.

I did, however, buy a lot of inexpensive furniture that looks nice but I don't really care about it. If my kids scratch the cheap faux mid century modern coffee table... It's fine. Whatever. Have friends over. Play video standing on the couch... It's OK.

Looking back on the obsession with keeping up the perfection of certain rooms, it seems absurd. But my house and many of my friends and relatives had rooms that were basically furniture showrooms 350ish days/year.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

It was meant to be a uncomfortably humorous. Goal achieved.

Every grandparent and pet death that occurred while I lived there was told to us in that room.

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sticky_applesauce07@reddit

And you were never allowed in their bedroom or bathroom.

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man_teats@reddit

I remember sneaking into my parent's bedroom when I was maybe 14 and trying on his sportcoats. I reached into the pocket of one of them and pulled out my dad's MOLAR TOOTH. I put it back and got the fuck out of there

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Global-Jury8810@reddit

I remember my dad kept a tooth in a vest pocket. Is this a Silent Gen trend?

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frackleboop@reddit

When my dad died, we found a glass eyeball in a basket in the dresser. No idea why he had it or where he got it. It was quite the wtf moment. There was also a roll of Rolaids that expired in 1992. He died in 2012.

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man_teats@reddit

All I know is that my dad hated doctors and dentists and never went. Like at all. He was a traveling salesman and was gone more often than not. I just imagined he yanked it out with pliers in some smoke filled backwater motel room with the Morton Downey Jr show playing in the backround

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EnvironmentalGift257@reddit

And only bourbon for anesthetic.

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man_teats@reddit

My dad would have had Canadian Club

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EnvironmentalGift257@reddit

My first stepdad didn't drink that much, 2-3 drinks a week of Crown and rocks. My mother went through half a box of wine every night occasionally throwing vodka or scotch in there too. I have never figured out how he could stand her. I sure couldn't and got the hell out of there at my first opportunity.

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ThermionicMho@reddit

KICKASS!!!

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HarleyButterfly@reddit

My Pop-Pop cemented his golden molar tooth in between the bricks on our enclosed porch wall. It's still there!

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mia_sara@reddit

I found 3 adult teeth and a lock of hair in my Great-Grandmother’s (Greatest Gen) sewing box. It was passed down to my Grandma (Silent Gen) who never opened it. So everyone thought aww, give the family heirloom to me. Thanks.

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Good-Bodybuilder-985@reddit

I looked it up and carrying a tooth (especially a wisdom tooth) on your person can be seen as protection or good luck, a superstition popular in 19th and 20th century Europe and Appalachia. Cool!

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thebrandedsoul@reddit

How do you know it was HIS tooth?!

😳

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bitsy88@reddit

Because it's in his pocket. Doesn't matter who it came out of, that's HIS molar now 😂

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jbenze@reddit

When my MIL moved, my wife and I were responsible for moving/cleaning/storing all of her stuff that REEKED of cigarettes. In one of the boxes was a giant ass molar she’s hanging onto. L

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sticky_applesauce07@reddit

I was caught opening the condoms. I thought they were candy and was confused with a wet balloon.

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ActuallyAlexander@reddit

Real Charlie Brown moment

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CurrentHair6381@reddit

Coneheads movie, anyone?

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Affectionate_Ask_769@reddit

I’m cracking up hahahah

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taleofbenji@reddit

Lmao.. reminds me of the Life of Pi.

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Ambitious_Toe_4357@reddit

Isn't that from the Great Gatsby or something? I remember the dentist with a billboard or some mobster when they were going to visit the side chick.

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Impossible_Fig2646@reddit

Only to clean it.

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MemoryHot@reddit

Actually, I was allowed more into my parents bedroom/bathroom than the fancy living room

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

well yeah, that too...

Assumed that didn't need mention

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Frosty_Cloud_2888@reddit

My parents weren’t around to keep me out

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Pretend-Menu-8660@reddit

I def had friend’s who had house like that! We just didn’t even have a dining room, or an extra living room, no den… we only had one living room.

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blanksix@reddit

A couple of friends of mine seemed to have that experience, but no. I got the unsupervised, latchkey kid experience. It was always a bit weird whenever I was at a friend's house that had your kind of structure because it was so foreign to me at the time. I'm pretty rules-driven now, though, probably because of that.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

Same latch key life here, but still had to stay out of those rooms

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No_Income6576@reddit

And you followed the rules? I snooped all over when home alone lol

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

oh, no. Except for the formal living room. Mom vacuumed that in perfect stripes and could always tell if you went in there

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MissGrou@reddit

Wow !

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

I guess she got it from her parent's, they had the same kind of formalish living room.

We only went in grandma and grandpa's living room for christmas with the cousins

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FIREnV@reddit

Ha! We must be related. This is exactly how it was for us too. Both my grandparents also had "furniture showcase"/ "museum" rooms that we only entered for major holidays. Even in their very small 1950s ranch homes. They relegated themselves to like, 500 sq feet because half the house was "off limits" and meant only for company or special events.

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NighthawkCP@reddit

My grandparents had something similar at the front of their house, but they didn't really care about us going in there. I think they closed the doors on those rooms more so they didn't have to worry about heating/cool them to be honest, but they had a small formal dining room they kept their fancy china and the silver in, so I think they were worried about something being broken by us kids running around. My grandparents expanded the house in the 70's by building an addition on the back and added a new kitchen, a bigger dining room right beside the kitchen, and a laundry/mud room, so the original kitchen space became a nice den. Most guests came in to the house from the back and would hang in the den, which could easily seat 9-10 people. If they had a big group of people over they would open the doors to the formal dining room and den at the front, but otherwise it was pretty much just used for Christmas.

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Then_Increase7445@reddit

None, our house was too small to make any room off-limits.

The house was, however, set up in a way that you could close off the TV room and kids' bedrooms so the adults and kids could be separate when people came over.

The only thing that is mostly off-limits for our kids now is our bathroom, since they have their own.

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singlesunbeam_enough@reddit

We had one living room but we weren’t allowed to sit on the couches because those were for the guests only. My parents sat on the floor too. We had a guest bathroom that only guests could use. All four of us shared the smaller bathroom. I’d get so jealous when my friends came over and they got to use the nicer bathroom lol …this changed as we got older and were more responsible. We sat on the couches once I stoped spilling all the time. 🤣I am guilty in that I totally understand the guest bathroom idea because having teenagers use our main bathroom and trying to keep that clean just in case someone dropped by was exhausting. To this day I like a clean bathroom when I visit someone else’s house. If I can see your toothpaste spit and toilet messes I’ll be talking about it on the way home 🤣 I also like my own personal space and didn’t allow the kids to come into our bedroom without knocking. I think having boundaries are important. I’d also respect their space and knock first as well. My parents were good about following the same rules they asked of us so I tried to model that in my home too. It all sounds crazy when I write it down but it worked for us and saved money and time. I’d do it again for my hard working folks ❤️

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OrigamiTongue@reddit

This is emblematic of boomers right here. Stretching their budgets or not, they largely had so much space they didn’t even know what to do with it all.

We stretched our budget to get just enough space.

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Mooseandagoose@reddit

Formal living room, their bedroom and the formal dining room was off limits (unless it was homework time and I was crying over my math worksheets bc my CPA dad was helping me). 😅

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Bobu-sama@reddit

We had the formal family room that no one ever used except for on Christmas, also with a semi tuned piano and nicer furniture than in the living room that we actually used. My mom also kept it immaculate complete with the same vacuum lines. It wasn’t mysterious or anything though, it was just boring. I would sit in there to do homework sometimes. Our dining room was also rarely used once we hit middle school as most of us ate at different times at the kitchen island and my dad was never home before 8:30-9:00. My house now looks like a KB Toys threw up everywhere and there’s very little space that hasn’t been infiltrated by kids. Probably just the home office.

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glyptodontown@reddit

Off-limit rooms:

Formal living room: So much mauve. Doilies, furniture I had to polish with Pledge, display stands with a bunch of fenton glass and crystal shit. Just...a lot of vases. We only sat in here on the uncomfortable wingback chairs at Christmas.

Dining room: Unwieldy table and giant hutch with all the china that is still in my brother's basement in moving boxes because no one actually wants dishes that can't go into the dishwasher. We only ate here on holidays.

Parents bedroom/bathroom. I would sometimes sneak in here and watch Golden girls with my mom.

Rooms we actually used:

Eat in kitchen: This was the GOOSE ZONE.

Den (where we spent most of the time): Amish/countrycore pottery zone. Also a tv inside a giant tv cabinet.

Basement: This is where all the kids, toys, computers and radon hung out.

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melleo16@reddit

So familiar, except we only sat in the formal living room when extreeeeeeemely special guests came over.

Joke was on my mom - the dogs caught on that no one went into that room, so it ended up becoming their secluded bathroom when they didn't want to go outside

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

So we had the same house.

I've already told my parents we're not taking the China, and they've already admitted it came from Kmart and we can throw it away. LOL.

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Separate-Relative-83@reddit

We had smaller houses without extra rooms, nothing was off limits. My parents were born in ‘56 and ‘60.

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redstopgringo@reddit

Using the Simpson house as an example of “I’m not a rich kid” brings out my inner Frank Grimes.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

I mean that it was not like Kevin McAlister's house

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Barnus77@reddit

My parents used to have a couple rooms like this, a dining room and a “fancy” living room that were both only used for guests. By the time I was in junior high they gave up on the “fancy dining room” that was only used twice a year & used it regularly, non fancily. They still live in the same house and now use all the rooms.

I remember this being common with maybe half of my friends growing up, usually the more middle class or uptight parents. Less common with the divorced / working class / hippy / or never around types of parents.

It sort of seemed like something that was done for THEIR greatest gen parents, when visiting and expecting a more formal dining environment.

I will say, something my 80 yo parents still do, that I absolutely do NOT do, is set the table properly (tablecloth, placemat, napkin, 4 utensils at each spot) at literally every meal. I actually think it’s sort of nice.

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HermioneMarch@reddit

We didn’t have off limits rooms other than my parents bedroom of course, but we definitely had rooms where we were expected to be tidy and careful. The living room was one such room. No eating or drinking. No toys out. Mom’s music studio was the other. We played piano so we had to practice and we were allowed to use the stereo, but we were super careful with it.

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unbalancedcentrifuge@reddit

None really... we were poor, and our house was a total trash heap that was always under some sort of construction. There was also a lot of us, so there was no room to have anything restricted. We didn't have very many nice things to protect..... We used to buy a couch at the fleamarket every year or so and burn the old one in the yard after shooting at it. I do miss that old house.

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Affectionate_Ask_769@reddit

I grew up close to this and am the polar opposite now. Read a book the other day about these people who lived in a similar fashion to what I grew up with but it focused on the relationships and how you really learn to rely on others and be reliable. And it helped me learn to recognize that good people can do bad things sometimes when the only choices is varying degrees of bad. Anyhow, it was the first time that I’ve looked back and didn’t think “thank the fuck I escaped that” and actually thought, “I was really lucky to have had that.”

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unbalancedcentrifuge@reddit

I have a PhD in a white collar-ish job surrounded by people that grew up with much more than me....let me tell you we may get good jobs, houses, and cars and we try to blend in but that poor upbringing leaves an indelible mark on you and you never quite get rid of it. I am happy to have it because it gave me the reputation of being scrappy and problem solving (granted, I would have loved some more childhood dental care ). I loved my childhood... we were poor, and the house was often missing pieces, but it was clean and safe.

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animus218@reddit

What book is this? Sounds interesting

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Affectionate_Ask_769@reddit

I’m super embarrassing to admit it but they’re romance novels lol.

There were actually a number of collections that have served the same purpose but the one that started it was part of a series called “Five Packs Series” by Cate C. Wells. I’d suggest reading them all but found the second and fifth books really made me reflect.

Then I fell in love with her Motorcycle Club books: Steel Bones with Heavy being my favorite.

Anyhow, it sent me down a rabbit hole of reflection and trying to find my favorite type of book and I realized that what was resonating with me is that people from “the outside” often view the lives of those who grew up in poverty as less valuable and I definitely internalized that sentiment to the point that I’ve “grinded” hard to get where I am now. These silly books I started to read to get me through frequent work travel/flights have really softened my heart a bit and allowed me to remember the good rather than trying my damnedest to distance myself from any possible perception of coming from poverty.

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animus218@reddit

You shouldn't feel embarrassed for reading! Adding them to me ever growing TBR list!

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Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit

I think it's "we were poor" and "so was everyone around us." No one acted like OP's family in my childhood neighborhood, that would have been very strange. Everyone's houses were broken down pieces of shit.

... And then my dad remarried and we moved to a nice suburb when I was in middle school. We still didn't act like that, but some of my friends' parents did. There was more economic diversity there, and more pressure to "keep up appearances."

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KerouacsGirlfriend@reddit

burn the old one in the yard after shooting it ah ha ha, I think we have the same family…

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SheBrokeHerCoccyx@reddit

I was like wait, is this my cousin?

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Yeebeegee@reddit

My childhood house had this 1/2 the house was my parents bedroom, fancy dining and lounge. Velvet curtains, flocked wallpaper, carpet, chandelier. Other half was regular dinner table, couch/tv, no carpet. Fancy lounge was for when people came over, we weren’t allowed in there when we were younger. Changed as we got older and we used them more.

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bloodpriestt@reddit

lol motherfucker I grew up in a 60ft single-wide trailer surrounded by corn fields and cows

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latcady@reddit

None of it. I was able to go wherever I wanted except of course for my older brothers room.

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Pheeline@reddit

No part of our house was "off limits" but we kids (there were three of us, with me being the youngest) needed permission to go into bedrooms not our own, and to provide a reason why we needed to go into said bedroom. Our house was a 4-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom doublewide mobile home so we didn't really have any 'extra rooms', but it was a pretty decent size house of its kind for the time (we lived in it from 1987 through the end of 1994; before that we had a singlewide). We hung out in the living room or our own bedrooms, ate in the dining room. Had one TV with VCRs and one PC, but we each had our own stereo to listen to. Vacations usually involved driving to visit relatives further away, but we did go to the beach a couple of times as well and we had season passes to the nearby amusement park (Carowinds) for most of our childhoods.

We weren't well-off but we were more well-off than living in a doublewide in a mobile home community might otherwise have implied, probably because my dad travelled around the world a lot for work and got paid extra for doing so afaik. My parents also were pretty good at making money stretch when needed and my mom was especially good at seeking out bargains and clipping coupons.

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socksonachicken@reddit

Grew up somewhat poor. The house was already 100+ years old when I was born, and was always in some sort of state of fixing the falling apart pieces. Cars were not as old, but pretty much the same. Never went hungry and always had what I needed.

The only room that was off limits was my parents bedroom.

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Spartan04@reddit

None. The house I grew up in wasn’t big enough for off limit rooms. No formal living room, just the regular one, which was part of one big room that also included the dining room. Though the dining room table was more often covered with school things or my mom’s craft projects since we usually ate in the living room.

We also didn’t have a guest room since we had 3 bedrooms, the master bedroom was my mom’s, and me and my brother each had one of the others.

It was more there were things that were off limits, like the stove when I was too young or power tools rather than whole rooms.

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trainwreckhappening@reddit

Technically nowhere was off limits. We just learned the hard way in my house not to snoop in places where we might run into something like peach flavored whip cream that needs no refrigeration (my mom was obsessed with peach flavor).

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Lanky_Rhubarb1900@reddit

Not my home, but I would go to friend’s houses where there was a formal “reading room” that seemed to literally exist as a museum exhibit.

In my own home, it was their bedroom or the general vicinity of “their” places (my dad’s end of the dining room table where he’d work, my mom’s recliner) that we were not to go near or touch anything.

They were so weirdly possessive about their space and here I am sharing everything but my own toothbrush with my teenager 😂

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Wise_Connection8657@reddit

It’s wild what you do when you like your kids!!

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Ws6fiend@reddit

I don't think that's what it is. I think some people were raised extremely disciplined by their parents and that they emulated that style. Some were raised in that style and decided they hated it and choose to place no boundaries.

My dad's parents were strict when he was growing up, but when it came time for the grandkids they let us get away with almost anything. The irony being that for the first 5 years of my life I spent as much time at their house as my own because my parent's couldn't afford daycare.

It's not like my grandparents loved their children any less, just that they were born into a different era.

That's not to say that some didn't like their kids at all either though.

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Wise_Connection8657@reddit

Unfortunately I do think that is what it was for a lot of parents that were around when I was raised .

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Lanky_Rhubarb1900@reddit

Yeah, I don’t feel like my parents like us, or liked being parents, nearly as much as I really like mine. I mean obviously there’s love, but I actually like my kid, haha

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Ws6fiend@reddit

I think so many people are just doing their best with what life gave them. Boomers were handed a lot of good things(longest era of general wealth, peace and prosperity in recent history) and some bad. Boomers were raised by a generation of PTSD veterans who were raised by generations that communicated even less and went through some really bad times prior to the end of WW2. It doesn't forgive boomers for their current fuck ups, but that entire generation never learned how to be told what to do.

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karenmcgrane@reddit

I think about how traumatic it must have been to immigrate. Or to be a first-generation American during the depression. My grandmother was one of nine kids raised in what must have been ordinary poverty for the time, they all slept on the floor in a two-room house, only learned English in school. All my grandparents have stories like that.

I do not imagine they were great parents to their Boomer kids.

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Puglet_7@reddit

I visited a girl on my rural road as a kid.

They had many rooms literally velvet roped off with fancy furniture.

But they still used an outhouse in 1988.

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Broad_Tie9383@reddit

I had a friend where everything on the first floor except the kitchen was pretty much off limits. They were wealthy and Iranian and the whole thing was for show/guests (not other children), which she seemed to think was pretty normal. Her room was much simpler and more modest.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

That was the living room with shelves of old photos and family trinkets like a grandma's button collection and a great grandma's cast iron iron

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78Sparkles@reddit

As a kid who grew up in an apartment and then a trailer, you were rich if you had garage, an upstairs, and/or a basement. And if you had a DISHWASHER, you were a Rockefeller in my mind! The Recession in 80s hit my parents hard when the Wonderbread factory my dad worked at closed down.

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Fair-Flower6907@reddit

we had a similar setup, but dining room was used weekly for family dinners and the formal sitting room had almost no furniture on it when we were little and then we bought some folding tables one year for a holiday dinner and then used them in the livingroom to set up elaborate lego dioramas that the neighbor kids would bring their lego space ships over and have epic battles with us. The family computer also lived in the living room. Everything in the house was used until it no longer functioned (TV channel switcher knob fell off -> plyers! Stereo power button stopped working, dad took it off and installed a pull cord!). The linoleum flooring, orginal stove/oven, and Formica counters lasted 30 years until the house flooded to be replaced.

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Fair-Flower6907@reddit

no guest room. I apparently told my mom (at 8 years old, and the oldest of 4), that we couldn't have any more kids. we were out of bedrooms and I didn't want to share with either of my brothers.

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erinrachelcat@reddit

We were poor, and my parents both came from humble beginnings, so we didn't have any rooms under wraps, but I certainly had friends who had "sitting rooms" that were completely unused and things like that.

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Pretty_Jellyfish9522@reddit

Very similar. We had a formal dining room and a formal living room that took up over 1/4 of the total square footage of the house. Ate every meal at a tiny kitchen table and watched TV in a much smaller family room. Bonkers.

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Leading-Summer-4724@reddit

Considering it sounds like I could fit about two of my parents’ house in yours…no nothing was off limits. We didn’t have so many extra rooms, so no way to stage things for guests.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

not that big, it was similar to the Simpson's house except out TV room was above the garage.

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redstopgringo@reddit

Time to go home to my mansion and eat my lobster!

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Leading-Summer-4724@reddit

If you had “four rooms that made up half the house”, then it was twice the size of mine lol.

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Twanlx2000@reddit

Yeah, it's not a contest, but we had one hallway bathroom and a hallway kitchen, and there's no placing another kitchen table anywhere other than the small nook we called a dining room. There was no guest bedroom or guest living room, because there was no room for... well, guests.

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Leading-Summer-4724@reddit

Yeah our “guest room” was someone sleeping in my room while I take the couch.

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bitsy88@reddit

Right? I grew up moving a lot and I can think of several one-bedroom places we lived. There was no room for an unused room. The closest was that I wasn't supposed to be in my parents' closet.

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becky_leigh@reddit

What the heck. I don’t know anyone who did this - ha. My parents were born 59 & 60 and the only thing was that the house had to be perfect if someone came over.

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Adventurous_Cloud_20@reddit

Our house was/is an old Sears and Roebuck Davenport model, you see them called a 4 square sometimes. There really wasn't room with 4 kids in the house for off limits space, but my mom tried. The main level where the front entrance is leads into a front hall and parlor, which my mom turned into the "good" living room in the early 90's. All southwest pastel colors (which didn't go with the late Edwardian woodwork and cabinetry at all), and southwest style furniture and decor. It was strictly off limits unless it was a holiday or we had company over.

It almost never got used and the furniture was still in mint condition a couple years ago when she and Dad decided to "redo" the parlor back to the way it used to be. Mom gave all of that furniture and decor to my kid brother and his wife when they bought their house. He put all of it in the basement and told mom that the basement is now his good living room and she's not allowed down there.

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flossiedaisy424@reddit

None. My parents were silent gen and early boomer and I’m late Gen X and we didn’t have any rooms in our house that couldn’t be used. Our house wasn’t big enough for that. And my parents both grew up on farms where you didn’t have fancy stuff like this either.
This is not the kind of world I grew up in.

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socalefty@reddit

Entire living room, parent’s bedroom and bathroom, older sister’s room. I spent most of my time at my friends’ houses anyway.

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Esabettie@reddit

For sure the living room and dining room, one of my fondest memories is my grandad, who lived with us, hiding cookies in the dining cabinet and sharing them with us as a late snack, just to be rebellious.

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eddiegordo83@reddit

My parents were boomers, but had me in their 30's. No part of my home was off limits, even they're bed room. I grew up rather affluent, though.

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captcelery@reddit

Nowhere, because I lived in an apartment with a single mother. We did have three bedrooms for three people, so that was pretty luxurious. But every space was shared and heavily used

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FatSteveWasted9@reddit

Y’all lived indoors?

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elphaba00@reddit

I grew up in a 100-year-old house with my parents. I'm not sure what the original purpose of the room was, but my dad used it as a computer room/office space. I could go in there, BUT I could not get into the large closet in that room. My parents literally called it the "forbidden closet." It was a bunch of stuff in storage, but it was also where they stashed my presents before my birthday and Christmas.

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Ginger630@reddit

None of my parents’ house was off limits. I was allowed in their room, on their bed.

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lEauFly4@reddit

There really wasn’t a room in my parents house that was off limits. I often hung out in their room with my mom as a teen.

My in laws had a sun room in their house that my husband remembers he wasn’t allowed to go in as a kid. It had green carpet and my mother in law liked to leave the vacuum lines in the carpet. They don’t really have any off limit rooms now (other than my niece’s room - she lives with them).

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rainy-brain@reddit

First time I've heard generation jones, but that's my parents! And yeah, there were two rooms that were off limits. Dining room was only for thanksgiving and extra stuff got piled on the table when it wasn't thanksgiving. Formal living room had some white sofas and weird glass tables from the 80's so we were definitely not allowed in there. once again, it was preserved for guests only.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

It comes from the term "keeping up with the Joneses" which is very much what my parents were doing. Trying to appear as if we had as much money as the families around us, without going into debt to do it.

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rainy-brain@reddit

that resonates, haha.

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PopularSet4776@reddit

There was no parts of the house off limits except of course my parents room when the door was closed.

My uncle and aunt built a house with a formal dining room and formal living room that they rarely used but looked nice.

I never understood that personally.

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Appropriate-Food1757@reddit

None of it

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icanliveinthewoods@reddit

We weren’t allowed in the living room except when watching some TV in the evenings and for Saturday morning cartoons. No eating allowed in there at all. We had a playroom with all our toys in there. When we weren’t playing in there, the playroom had to be neat with all toys put away. No toys allowed elsewhere in the house. Bedrooms were for sleeping only. We were allowed to have a stuffed animal on our bed, but no other toys allowed in the bedroom. If we were sick, we could have a book in our bedroom with us.

I remember a repair man coming to fix the furnace and seeing one of us kids and being surprised that the house was so clean with a kid in the house. “Actually, I have 3 kids”, my mom said, proud that the house was spotless and quiet. She was flattened when he said it didn’t look like any kids lived there.

Looking back, and having a kid of my own, that doesn’t seem like a flex. My house is generally clean, but my son has always been allowed to play with his toys wherever he wants, and make noise, and no room is off limits unless we’re wrapping gifts.

My mom has always been anxious about how other people perceive her and it made her overly controlling.

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FancyOctopodes@reddit

No part of the house was off limits, except the basement when my dad was working (he had a basement office and was like a proto WFH dude in the 90s, traveling regularly but his home office was his home base). We even had a fax machine! In our house!

I had rich cousins though who had like a whole wing of their house that no kids were allowed in.

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goofytigre@reddit

Family of 8. Nothing was off limits. Unless we were grounded from it like the computer or Super Nintendo.

My only-child friends from wealthy families, on the other hand, had whole rooms off limits. I felt anxiety when I had to walk through their formal living room to get to the dining room.

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Impossible_Fig2646@reddit

We had a fairly small house. I wasn't allowed in my parents' bedroom or bathroom except to clean. While I was "allowed" in the living room, I couldn't hang out there to read or play so I spent all my time in my room if I was at home. In summer I wasn't allowed in the house at all.

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LauraPa1mer@reddit

Formal living room and dining room we only used for special occasions.

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Trick-Session2388@reddit

I remember going to my uncle's house after he remarried and my new aunt told me "we don't sit in those chairs" when I wanted to read a book.

I did NOT understand why on earth anyone would have chairs that couldn't be sat in.

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Ineedavodka2019@reddit

None of it.

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silentsnak3@reddit

At my parents, we did not have enough rooms to have any off limits. The exception was my parents bedroom. You could go in, but you better knock first and you better not wake them up by doing it.

My grandparents had a study that was converted into the living room. You could do whatever, within reason, in there. The actual living room was different though. It had this soft and thick snow white carpet. It felt more like fur then cotton. You were allowed in there once a year during Christmas. Any other time my grandma would spank you if you were a child. Or cuss you out if adult.

When they passed away, I bought the house. Yea I use the room now, but I feel like my grandma is judging me from beyond the grave.

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handsomeape95@reddit

A good rule of thumb is that you were never allowed in the room that had the rain lamp.

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MoviesFilmCinema@reddit

We had quiet parts of our house. They felt like they were naturally that way. Living Room, Parent’s bedroom and parent’s bathroom.

As I grow older, I realize the late boomers were just weird as shit (separate from all the boomer hate - different discussion). They were weird then and we didn’t realize and they are getting weirder.

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brilliantpants@reddit

When I was young we didn’t have any off-limits areas, but my mom frequently bemoaned how embarrassed she was that we didn’t have a formal living room or an eat-in kitchen so we actually had to spend time in our living room and eat in our dining room every day.

When I was in middle school my dad build a big addition onto the house so we finally had a den and an eat-in kitchen. After that my mom got her wish and those two big rooms sat unused ever after.

Couldn’t be me! I truly don’t understand the obsession with projecting the image that you don’t actually live in your own house. These rooms are all mine and I use them all, baby!

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ipomoea@reddit

My parents built a house and made sure to not include “formal” rooms, because they were a waste of space. OTOH my husband’s parents also built a house and then only fought in the formal living room before their divorce and so he hates them, we call them the accusing parlors.

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lfergy@reddit

They weren’t technically off limits but rarely used because I always felt like I was going to stain or break something.

Also- never allowed in my parents bedroom or bathroom. Ever.

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Ws6fiend@reddit

"Also- never allowed in my parents bedroom or bathroom. Ever."

I always wonder when people say that why they weren't. Sometimes when we wanted to watch a movie before going to bed as a family of 4 we would all pile into my parents bed to watch it instead of sitting in the living room.

Now I'm convinced my parents did that so we would fall asleep and they would put us in our own beds and then be alone(this was mostly when we were in elementary school or prior).

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lfergy@reddit

🤷🏽‍♀️ I think my parents just wanted 1 room that was completely their own. Privacy. They were more strict w/ this when we were young (middle school & younger) but I get it. The rest of the house was for everyone- my brother and I, our friends. We followed a ‘knock before entering’ policy for all of our bedrooms but more often than not my mom would shoo me and we’d talk later. My friends were never allowed in my parents room. (Their bathroom en suite so that didn’t really matter.)

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bikeonychus@reddit

We didnt have a big enough house for that, but I know my parents would have been itching to do this.

Instead, we had walking on eggshells, and being constantly dehydrated because my dad would scream at us if we had a drink of anything outside of the kitchen incase of spills, and mum would scream at us for being in the tiny kitchen.

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symonym7@reddit

Both parents smoked indoors year around and at some point friends' parents stopped letting them come over because they'd go home smelling like smoke and I'd go to school smelling like smoke so it royally stunted my social development as an only child so

None of the house was off limits, but it was a constant game of trying to find spots that were off limits to smoke.

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drainbamage1011@reddit

No rooms were off-limits. We didn't have the "fancy den/study", but some friends did. Actually, my in-laws still do. The formal dining room didn't get used for dining except at holidays, but I'd do my homework there a lot.

However, the top shelf on the bookshelf in my room had some old model cars my dad had made when he was younger. Those were not to be messed with, and I wasn't even allowed to box them up and use the space for myself. It was non-negotiable. They just sat there collecting dust.

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kbennett82@reddit

Nothing was off limits like we couldn’t set foot in there or anything but there were rooms that just weren’t used a whole lot. Like the dining room was only used for large family gatherings…we ate our dinner every night at the kitchen table too. Guest rooms were for company staying over and storing things but we were never not allowed in there. We couldn’t mess it up or we’d be in trouble bc it was set up nice but you know.

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Specialist-Leek8645@reddit

Yup this was normal around here, very very Portuguese. Usually raised-ranch houses. Plastic runners and couch covers, plastic tablecloths under fabric.

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Elegant-Aerie-1233@reddit

None. Thinking back on it, I don’t even think any of my friends houses had rooms off limits. As an adult I went to my brother in laws house and for the first time and his wife said to not sit on a couch in their sitting room. My husband and I just looked at each other like she was crazy. That was a new one for both of us. My brother and law and her divorced a few years later, I can’t figure out why. Haha

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n0exit@reddit

Half my childhood was in a double wide "manufactured home". The only part of the house that was off limits was half of my bedroom closet where my dad kept his gun collection. No joke. There was ammo in there too I'm pretty sure. If I were a more delinquent kid, I'd probably have accidentally shot myself or someone else.

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absentlyric@reddit

This was more of an issue with my grandparents. Kids were not allowed inside at all if it was nice out. And if it wasn't, we had to sit in the kitchen. NOBODY was allowed in their living room, which looked pristine with white carpeting and birds eye maple everything else.

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imnottheoneipromise@reddit

No. My parents would think that was the most outlandish and ridiculous bullshit ever. My parents are extremely practical and it’s served them well. They never lived above their means, and my brother and I got to participate in basically anything we wanted for extracurriculars and we got to go to the skating rink. We did not get allowance or anything like that but we absolutely had what we needed and many things we wanted. There was no place “off limits” in our warm and loving home. And there is no place “off limits” in my own home.

Right now we are actually living back with my parents in my childhood home while we build our new house behind them. Still no place off limits.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

None, but I had rich kid friends who had that kind of thing.

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Temporary-Warning883@reddit

Yeah this is definitely a rich kid thing lol

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

We lived in a nice area but we were not rich

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ElleWinter@reddit

It's funny how he thinks he wasn't rich. I bet most people who were well off think they were just normal.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

There's a huge gap between rich and poor.

Some people call that the middle class.

My parents were basically house poor, they moved us to the suburbs for the schooling and clipped coupons, bought used, took second jobs, and saved everything they could to afford it.

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phoontender@reddit

I didn't think we were rich either but a prominent provincial politician now lives on my old street so yeah....for the time we pretty damn comfy. We had a formal living room on the 2nd floor with a fireplace and big leather couches and a massive 3 season porch off the back/entire deck just for a hot tub. Only place we weren't allowed was the garage because my dad had all his woodworking stuff in there and my mom didn't anyone losing appendages.

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phoenix0r@reddit

My parents were that age and we definitely did not have a set up Like that. We were fairly poor, especially when I was younger. And we lived in apartments and rented smaller houses. Never enough room for anything like that. I’m sure my stepmom would have been all about it but we just didn’t have that kind of life. I would say my more well/off friends had that going on.

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Strange-Employee-520@reddit

I'm reading this like who has extra rooms? I knew people who didn't have enough room, but extra?!

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Sweet_Deeznuts@reddit

Dude I’m reading this having grown up with my brother in a 2 bedroom apartment in cooperative housing with a single parent who slept in the living room once my brother and I were too old to share a room

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Kenway@reddit

I can think of some people who had a dining room that was only used for fancy dinners, or a nice sitting room/parlor, but TWO living rooms that you don't use is very strange.

We had neither. Working-class growing up, mom was a secretary and dad a pipe-fitter so we had a nice house but certainly no extra rooms.

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sorrymizzjackson@reddit

We have an old house that has a small front room and a larger back room on the first floor and a huge kitchen.

When we bought it, the owners had the small front room as a living room and the large back room as a formal dining room with another large table in the kitchen for eating.

We made the front room into the “parlor”, back room into the living room and still have a table that can seat 12 in our kitchen. Like we even know 12 people I would want in our house, lol,

It has a leaf, so it’s only taking up seating 8 Sort of space, really. The kitchen is big, but not scrooge mcduck big.

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blamberr@reddit

Musta been nice to grow up rich af

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New_Needleworker_473@reddit

Same. Gen Jones parents, highly superficial to this day. We were expected to play outside or in the unheated basement area. These days my dad has 3 houses, 2 are in a city he doesn't even live in anymore (actually one is city and one is suburb) but he works in another state where his 3rd house is. It's super weird to me. Why have an entirely furnished and designed house with a salt water pool, etc that you only use maybe twice a year and otherwise it stands empty? And the city condo? Just for when you have a night out in the city and don't want to drive to the suburbs? But to hear him tell it, he's just so poor and struggling. Lol! Okay sure. I don't even have one house! Let alone 3. Which is why he won't visit his grandchildren, too embarrassing to have his new wife (about my age) see what kind of squalor his kids live in....lol! We don't BTW live in squalor, I just choose to rent because I'm a single mom that doesn't want the hassle. But the fact that I don't have a designer home makes me unworthy I guess. 🙃

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Automatic-Seaweed729@reddit

Living room and dining room. We could enter on holidays, and to decorate for holidays. My grandparents were plastic couch people so I get where my mom was coming from. Now it seems crazy that we had two rooms we couldn’t enter.

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Bdoggg999@reddit

That was definitely a thing with my grandparents and I think one of my aunts but sort of died out. Our house was a dump and we weren’t poor. Kind of reminds me of having “good china” you never used was a big thing for the WWII generation and their parents and seems to have completely disappeared.

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USAF_Retired2017@reddit

Never allowed in their bedroom. Ever.

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beofscp@reddit

No rooms were off limits. We did have a formal living room that us kids just never went into, we had no reason to. I remember my parents would sit in there to read the paper each night. Us kids would be in the family room right beside watching tv.

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Starkravingbrie@reddit

I lived in a very rich area in an amazing house. I was also an only child and painfully careful. I wore pantyhose in elementary school and kept them perfect all day. We had white carpet and I NEVER damaged it. I was allowed wherever. My life was a living hell.

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Possible-Tangelo9344@reddit

Lived the first part of my life in a trailer - living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom. There were no rooms off limits but for the majority of the year we were outside as much as possible.

Then we moved to a bigger house and again no rooms off limits. Three bedrooms, dining room, living room, then like a den area, kitchen. We didn't use the dining room except for Thanksgiving but it wasn't off limits.

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_buffy_summers@reddit

None of the house was off-limits, or my parents wouldn't have been able to make us do all of the housework. My dad expected us to do the laundry and put it away, but he'd also get mad when we found stuff in his underwear drawer.

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Pinkkorn69@reddit

While there are many other areas my parents were like all other Generation Jones/Boomer parents. Rooms in houses werent really off limits. Same with moms parents now dad's parents thats a different story. But also we lost everything in a house fire when I was in 3rd grade moving into 2 hotel rooms and then a 2 bedroom apartment makes some things change.

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Slippery-Pete76@reddit

Formal living room? Dedicated TV room? Guest bedroom? What are those?

Our house wasn’t big enough to have any rooms that were off limits.

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EnvironmentalGift257@reddit

The only room that was off limits was my mom and stepdad's bedroom. My mom didn't really care but my stepdad would absolutely lose it if I went in there. Also there was the threat of seeing my mom naked which is one of my more traumatic childhood memories. We had a "family room" I guess you'd call it that had a pool table and later a snooker table in it which is where I played alot. It was 3x the size of the living room where the TV was. I mostly stayed in my room because I was avoiding my sister.

Also there was a waterbed in every bedroom. When we bought our last house I bought a full wave king sized waterbed and I was so excited. My wife hated it and my son has it now. He's going to have a rude awakening when he moves out and has to go to a regular mattress.

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mackattacknj83@reddit

None of the house was off limits but there was wasted space. The dining room just basically held the mail when you walked through it to the kitchen

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CottaBird@reddit

We had a big house, but everywhere was fair game. I remember a friend’s house having an off-limits room, where he’d freak out if I forgot and made foot prints on the carpet with my socks, blemishing the perfect vacuum lines, because he could get in trouble, and that will never, ever make sense to me.

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don51181@reddit

None of my family had a formal room. So just my parent’s bedroom.

My wife’s parents had a formal living room and still have it to this day. Although now they regret having it because it’s a waste of space. In over 20 years I never seen anyone spend time in there.

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MartialBob@reddit

My home wasn't like this but I had a friends who had a home like this. I never knew exactly what his father did but the home was not just large but kind of fancy. Like a lot of people have those big mcmans, but this was actually a real rich person's home and not just simply a home that's bigger than the rest. Also, it's worth mentioning that this family was more than a little dysfunctional. The entire second level the house was basically cut off from all of the kids. We were never even allowed to walk near there. The house itself is big enough that this wasn't a big deal and I wasn't the kind of kid to push the limits but it always kind of threw me that this was a rule.

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astronomydomone@reddit

I grew up in a house less than 1000 sq ft, so we had no spare rooms.

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snuffy_smith_@reddit

My grandmother was a gen jones. She had off limits rooms.

The formal living room with antique sofa not ment for sitting except in funeral clothes after the service, and the formal dinning room with the china hutch. It was used for family dinners, those only happened at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and after a funeral.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

Grandmother?

Jones are late Boomers

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snuffy_smith_@reddit

Oops got my gens mixed up

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jayne-eerie@reddit

None? The house I lived in until I was 14 was just a living room, eat-in kitchen/dining room, three bedrooms, two baths, and a playroom/family room in the basement. We weren’t supposed to be in my parents’ room for no reason, but otherwise the house was ours.

At my grandparents’ house there was a living room we weren’t supposed to play in, mainly because it had a lot of fragile stuff. But there wasn’t anything in there that was interesting for kids anyhow.

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Background_Title_922@reddit

Well I was raised by my grandparents so they were older (1934 and 1936) so that may have played into it but we had a similar setup (yes they were relatively well off but that’s part of the reason I was with them) for the first ten years of my childhood. The formal living room had one of those giant wood record players that I wasn’t allowed to touch.

The creepiest “off limits” room was my best friend’s mother had a room lined with glass cases that held her freaky extensive doll collection. At least 100. I seriously still shudder thinking about it.

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clutzycook@reddit

There were rooms in our house that got limited use, but they weren't explicitly off limits. My parents' room, of course, was a kid-free zone unless we were going in there to dust, or they had asked us to fetch something. We also had what I guess you would call a formal living room that did not (and still doesn't) see a lot of use. Strangely, the TV that was in there (huge console TV of course) was the one we used with our PlayStation, so we were allowed to be in there but if we started making a mess in there, we'd be banned for awhile.

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Intelligent-Camera90@reddit

Growing up, the only place we really weren’t supposed to hang out was the garage. It was packed with my dad’s stuff, and only really had a path from our back door to the clothes dryer and the back patio (plus my mom’s “cupboard” - a 2 door red metal cabinet full of canned goods).

Other than bedrooms (3 for 5 people), we only had a kitchen, living room, and bathroom. My parents had no issues with us in our own rooms, or any of the public rooms. They preferred that we stayed outside, though.

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Yellow_Curry@reddit

Grew up in a 1200sqft ranch house. Basically my dad’s lazy boy was off limits but that’s about it. Friends who had bigger homes had rooms that no one went into.

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mia_sara@reddit

That was definitely my Grandparent’s house but not the one I grew up in.

“Tragic news” made me laugh. That was delivered in their formal living room. The regular living room was for benign gossip. The kitchen table was for scandalous gossip and women secretly smoking.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

Yeah... if our parents took us in there and it wasn't Easter or Christmas, it was something bad.

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Green_343@reddit

My parents had a similar set up where we could hardly use the dining room or formal living room. They had white floral couches and 3 kids! Wtf? The living room was the TV and toy room too and they had those folding, vented doors to close it off and conceal our chaos.

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PetSoundsSucks@reddit

They kept our sitting room off limits by keeping it boring as hell

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emptybeetoo@reddit

That sounds crazy to me. I guess our house wasn’t big enough to have rooms off limits.

The closest thing I saw was the in-home daycare I went to. Most of the basement was our play room, but the dad’s adjoining man cave was strictly off limits. He had a pool table, Playboys, liquor, and shotguns in there. So obviously they didn’t want a bunch of little boys in there, and in retrospect it’s surprising that the mom’s threats of severe punishment were enough to keep us out (usually, we only snuck in there a couple of times when we were sure she wasn’t paying attention).

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RanaEire@reddit

Oh, man... and shotguns in there...

Mad stuff!

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dcgrey@reddit

This was effectively true in my house but not a rule. There was absolutely nothing about the living room or dining room that made you want to be in there.

I have an okay-sized house now and we use every square inch of it. I can't imagine paying to heat a room I don't use lol.

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roonilwonwonweasly@reddit

None. They didn't like it when we went into their room and used their bathroom but they weren't off limits.

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scattershotdreams@reddit

Both of my parents came from poor farming families, so no they didn’t care about looking rich.

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Solid-Hedgehog9623@reddit

My parents room was the only place off limits. I went snooping in there one time and found condoms. So anyhow, that’s the last time I went in there.

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throwawayfromPA1701@reddit

We weren't allowed to sit on the nice couch, like ever. It was in the big living room which never got used.

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crapbear83@reddit

The god-damned Thermostat

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Writeforwhiskey@reddit

My house didn't have this but a lot of my friends did. I grew up where nearly all the parents were Gen Jones but living with their Silent Gen parents (i know no one believes it but yes, even some Boomers could not afford to buy homes in the 80s). The Silent Gen grandparents had roped off living rooms. If felt like walking into an exhibition. Oh and dont you dare use their guest bathroom, that was for "real guests" not kids lol.

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Traditional_Entry183@reddit

There was essentially nothing in our house that was "off limits" other than my parents closet without my mom being there also. She didn't want nice clothes pulled down and laying on the floor.

My family was somewhere between working poor and lower middle class, and the house wasnt big enough for that.

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sweetnsalty24@reddit

We had off and off limits living room and dining room. However, domce we didn't have a finished basement or nonis room, we'd hang out in the den or 4th bedroom/upstairs TV room.

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Why_are_you321@reddit

My mother was raised in the after years of WWII and spent much of her time at my great grandparents home due to the war leaving her father with an extreme alcohol addiction, and my grandmother was working. As a result she was raised with a heavy influence of “children should be seen and not heard”

When it came to my mother raising children, nothing was “off limits” but we were also taught to respect our belongings because we would only get them once.

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puer_mendax_00@reddit

Never heard of this..

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mickeltee@reddit

I kind of had both experiences. When we were little we were poor. My dad got a better job when I was ten and we started a come up. When we were poor nothing was off limits. When we moved the front room was partially off limits, and it wasn’t really “off limits.” You had to walk through it to get upstairs, but you didn’t hang out in there because there was nothing to do in that room.

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tgerz@reddit

My parents were a little older than yours. They didn’t make much money but ended up with 7 kids between the two of them. In a 3 bed with a converted 4th “bedroom”. I say “bedroom” because it was one of those Sears add-ons with the vinyl windows and a plastic roof. With 4 boys and 3 girls the girls had a room and the boys split between the other two rooms. Nothing could reasonably be off limits. It simply wasn’t possible.

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LadyLoki5@reddit

We weren't explicitly /not/ allowed, but our parents really did not want us in their bedroom.

We were not allowed in the garage because my dad was a hobbyist mechanic and had expensive tools and car parts all over that he didn't want us messing with.

Besides that.. We were free roam children lol

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AotKT@reddit

None of the house. The only time my parents' room was off limits was when the door was closed. And after once forgetting that rule and walking in, I never did again.

My Asian friends definitely had rooms that weren't exactly off limits but we weren't supposed to get on the furniture. Guest bedrooms, plastic covered couch in the formal living room.

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dongdongplongplong@reddit

this sounds more like a home from my grand parents generation

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MemoryHot@reddit

Yes, me and my sister were not allowed in the formal living room area… we lived there for 20 years my parents hosted fancy people maybe twice. When they weren’t home I’d invite friends over and hang out in there just to be “rebellious”

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Izalii@reddit

Yes, we had a formal living room and dining room. These weren’t off limits per se but they were rarely used rooms with fancy looking furnishings.

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DarkStarComics333@reddit

I cant relate to this post because we had a total of four rooms in my entire house. I guess my room was sometimes off limits in Winter because we only had heating in one room and my room would get icicles forming on the inside which led to mould later on, so there were times I couldn't sleep in there. The only places off limits for me were the cupboards with medicine/cleaning stuff in really.

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Electronic_Rope4178@reddit

We didn’t have a lot and not a very big house, aside from the “master” bedroom everything was fair game.

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Diligent_Accident775@reddit

Nope. That sounds awful

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nerdylegofam@reddit

Nothing in our house was off limits. My grandmother's house definitely had two rooms none of us cousins could go in - the formal living room and the formal dining room. Not even when our parents were eating fancy holiday meals in there!

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CariniFluff@reddit

But hey you go to rest at the ~~cool~~ kids table!

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Fly-by-Night-@reddit

It wasn't off limits per se, but I never set foot inside the dining room other than holidays, birthdays and when we had Company.

In hindsight, it was such a waste of space; our living room was basically a lean-to tacked onto the side of the kitchen, and it would have made SO much more sense to swap these too around and get everyday use out of the nice room.

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nvmls@reddit

We ate in the dining room, it feels weird to not use a perfectly good room made for it. My mom also sewed in there and did crafts.

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nvmls@reddit

No place was off limits but don't look in mom's pocketbook unless she's telling you to get something out of it. Silent gen parents.

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Fine_time@reddit

None, we never had a formal anything and growing up my parents were big on chores which involved some version of cleaning every room of the house.

As an adult I notice when partners especially didn’t grow up with chores.

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makeshift101@reddit

Not my parents, but my grandparents. They have/had/have? A room just for show. It was a big deal not to go into this room.

Now as a 42 year old man, grandparents dead, father lives there, I will not step foot in that room. My dad and his wife do now, but I don't touch it.

All I need is my grandmother coming back to haunt me

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4luminate@reddit

Parents’ bedroom and bathroom.

Wife grew up with 100% freedom. And that’s how our kids were raised, much to my dismay. You have to go through 3 doors to get to our toilet. I’ve been walked in on 3x in the 7yrs we’ve had our house. I hate that I have to lock the water closet door when the bedroom and bathroom doors are closed.

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sundae_diner@reddit

Just the one. The "Formal" living room, always spotless and where we had the parish priest, neighbors and first time visitors sit.

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violetstrainj@reddit

Nothing was off limits at our house (2-bedroom single wide trailer, we squeezed six people into a tiny space) but almost everything was off limits at my grandparents’ house. Or, at least that’s what my parents said. We weren’t allowed to touch anything, and we weren’t allowed to be anywhere past the front bathroom. And it wasn’t like my grandparents were rich or anything, I think my dad just didn’t want us to embarrass him by breaking something.

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Lastofthehaters@reddit

The only thing that was off limits was Dads room, and the cabinet stereo

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TinyRandomLady@reddit

The only room that was off-limits was the formal living room or like the white living room. We only ever used it at Christmas or the rare occasion my folks had friends over.

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CariniFluff@reddit

Wow reading this totally unlocked a core memory that I somehow completely forgot.

Just like you were had two rooms opposite of each other they were basically never used, nor did anyone even walk in them.

When you opened the front door there was a hallway straight ahead that went into the kitchen. Directly next you the hallway was the staircase going parallel to the hallway to go to the 2nd floor.

However if you walked in and turned right, there was the formal dining room that we only ever used for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. If you turned left there was another identical room, except this one nobody ever sat in...ever. I'm talking over the 10 years we lived there, I spent less than 20 minutes in total in that room. It had a gas/fake wood fireplace that we never used, uncomfortable couches that had never been sat on and... I didn't know some potpourri on a table? Both rooms has another entrance on the far side of the door, the left room going to the hallway to the office and kitchen, the right one going to the kitchen and living room.

Both rooms had white carpet so you couldn't even use them to cut through if you wanted to go to the living room or office from the stairs/front door, you had to use the center hallway to not track mud into the white carpet.

It's weird, it's almost like my parents didn't know what to do with the room on the left (I didn't either TBH). We already had a large living room, we already had a kitchen with the regular table and a formal dining room so there was nothing really to do with that room with the couches and shitty fireplace. And since there were no doors on either entrance you couldn't just like close it off or turn it into a guestroom. Funny enough just like OP that room had a completely out of tune piano.

We weren't "rich" rich, but we bought it right at the start of the "McMansion" construction phase and it was far enough from the city that we had over an acre of land. Man it's been like 20 years since I've even thought about that off limits room.

My parents almost never had anyone over besides very close friends and neighbors so it wasn't at all a "show off" room; it looked very sterile like nobody had stepped foot in there in decades (which was true). It was more is a "we can think of what the hell to do with this room" room.

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be_loved_freak@reddit

Our first house had no rules like that but our next house had a dining room in it & it was forbidden to go in there outside of holidays.

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jenesia-CakeEatnNPC-@reddit

i grew up in the house my mom grew up in, it was still owned by my gma who also owned another house up the street she lived in with a couple of my aunts & uncles bcz my mom was the oldest and had us young. (i actually live in my gmas house now since she passed in 2024.) our house had a living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen and 3 bedrooms all on the main floor and there were 5 of us. we had a wood burning fire place and half finished basement and ate at the dining room table every night. none of us ever shared rooms so my older brother had the half basement as his room. we lived in a corner lot that was huge next to a dirt road that led straight to my gmas and were latchkey kids so we grew up swimming in the river (Missouri - crazy ik!) and running around til the lights came on outside, my parents were always working. we were solidly middle class only bcz my gma owned the house so there was no rent/house payment for my teen parents raising 3 kids.

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likesexonlycheaper@reddit

Uh what? We didn't have any off limit rooms lol

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TALieutenant@reddit

The only time that was a thing was the few months my aunt's friend stayed with us. We weren't allowed in his room..but otherwise? Nope. Free.

I think, even now, my dad would prefer we not use his and Mom's bathroom, and just use the main, but if its already occupied....

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jadethebard@reddit

Your house was big enough to have extra rooms? Sorry, grew up dirt poor, every inch of space was used to live.

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Mammoth_Solution_730@reddit

No area of the house was off limits growing up. Nothing, except the bathroom, had doors anyway. 😬🫣

(Old house, and odd design choices -- most transoms had larger than door sized openings or were separated by stairs that opened into the room, rather than a door)

- For our current house, our kids don't come into our the bedroom but that's mostly for privacy. We also don't enter theirs without express permission. But there's no place in our unit that is non-functional/just for show. Every square foot is so precious (high COL area) that there can be no dead space. It all gets a purpose.

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Flashy-Share8186@reddit

we moved several times when I was a kid but the ranch house I remember earliest was kind of like a one story layout like the Drapers house on Mad Men, a circle layout with a foyer, a living room with piano and stereo and we never went in there, fancy dining room, teeny eat in kitchen/den with the tv where we all hung out and played, and then all the bedrooms off to the side. We had a guest bathroom near the foyer with the guest towels and little molded soaps you were never supposed to touch.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

That was my grandparent's house. As soon as you walked in, to the left was the nice living room that was only used for christmas, straight ahead was a dining room, and to right was the guest bathroom and bedroom. In the back of the house was the master bed and the then kid's bedrooms. The laundry, Grandpa's office, and the TV room were downstairs.

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Ok_Profession_990@reddit

Shiiiiit ok you aren't a rich kid. I didn't even have a bedroom till I was 16

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Affectionate_Ask_769@reddit

Only my mom’s room when the door was shut. Otherwise nothing was off limits. We were feral and our parents were hippies

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BlueLighthouse9@reddit

None. Well maybe my siblings rooms without permission but that’s it. 4 kids so dad even built a bedroom in the garage since even in a 4 bedroom house it got crowded. Dad was silent generation an mom was a boomer. I’m the youngest so only Xennial. Others are solidly Gen X

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notnotwatchinthis_00@reddit

Same generation parents and same rules, no one used the formal living room or formal dining room. Kids definitely not allowed to sit on the nice furniture or use the nice dishes.

Two of my best frienda were raised the same way. Our moms were named Deb, Debbie and Deborah.

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Roland-Of-Eld-19@reddit

We treated our house as off limits because if we were seen around the house we would be given a list of chores, that's why we stayed feral outside and snuck the odd drink from garden hose haha

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ohb78@reddit

House wasn’t small but definitely not big enough to have rooms that were off limits

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Valuable_One_1011@reddit

Same in our home. They kept us out by telling us it was haunted and only adults could keep the ghosts away. 😆 funny to think about now that I’m older than the adults at that time

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tasukiko@reddit

My parents acted more like hippies. They had us very young and there was not enough house for any parts to be off limits really. That being said we knew to never go into their room if the door was shut, and to try not to knock even. Like if someone wasn't actively barfing, bleeding or worse, stay away. We also were not allowed near the "garden" which we much later learned were marijuana plants being grown 😅.

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plastiquearse@reddit

We were a different level of … shall we say status or income or class.

I was discouraged to kick and/throw balls in the house which might just be my parents recognizing early days I’m not an elite athlete. They wouldn’t have put up with it even if I were.

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bedtimedoesntsuitme@reddit

Nope. My mom and I both spent a lot of time in our rooms and our house wasn’t very big.

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Haemwich@reddit

I didn't experience the formal living room until visiting a friend's Mcmansion in college. He reacted like I kicked his cat when I sat down on the couch.

The closest we had growing up was our grandmother's house. The office and bedrooms were off limits. At my other grandparents' house they only used the dining room table for thanksgiving.

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AuroraMortalis@reddit

That’s a lot of space to sacrifice! And I thought my parents were unreasonable.

Same situation though - they struggled financially but wanted to look like they didn’t. They had a very large formal dining room/living room combo that sat there untouched aside from when my mom would make me dust the gaudy furniture (purchased when times weren’t so lean, before us kids were around).

This space occupied a huge footprint on the total square footage of the house. The bedrooms were shoe box sized. I was around 20 when my parents stopped caring and they let their cats take it over. Now it smells like their litter box… mom still lives there.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

That's pretty much same as our house was.

The living room was a 1/3 of the first floor, and the "formal living room" was just a small room off the front entrance that new kept people from seeing the rest of the house. The dining room, laundry, and kitchen made up the other half. Upstairs was the three bedrooms and the TV room above the garage.

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PopcornSurgeon@reddit

We had a living room and dining room that were not so much strictly off limits as they were only used when we had people over. My mom did keep them nicer and I’m sure if the kids had chosen to hang out raucously in those spaces it would have been discouraged. But that didn’t happen. We mostly hung out in the TV room (sometimes called the den by my dad) or the kitchen, which had a big table we all ate at. My grandparents had essentially the same set up in the house where they raised my dad.

My parents’ bedroom was NOT off limits. They had a tv in there, so if we didn’t have family consensus about what to watch during prime time, our parents would watch what they want downstairs and any dissenting kids would watch their choice while sitting on mom & dad’s bed.

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_WeSellBlankets_@reddit

We didn't have enough money for there to be rooms that were off limits. We had one bathroom, there were no guest bedrooms. I shared a room with my brother for most of my childhood. Our dining room was a table in the kitchen. We did have a living room and a den, but neither had anything fancy. We mostly kept out of the living room so we can watch our own TV shows in the den.

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Ws6fiend@reddit

Nope. Pretty much could be in whatever room I wanted whenever I wanted. Parents were in the slightly older than yours crowd.

Only place we weren't allowed to mess around was the attic. That was where dad had put all his guns(found that out after high school). Also didn't want us going up there getting fiberglass insulation on ourselves or falling through the ceiling of the house.

We stayed in the living room. Had family dinners in the "dining room." It wasn't a seperate room and you could see the kitchen when sitting down. Didn't have a guest bedroom.

Guests either took my parents rooms(if it was either of their parents) and we were made to sleep on the couch when our parents would take our bed. Jokes on them that meant I got the couch and the big living room tv with the cable descrambler meaning I could watch any channel.

That sounds like a cold sterile environment to grow up in.

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sravll@reddit

We also had a formal living room we weren't really allowed in unless there was company.

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psysny@reddit

We weren’t allowed in the downstairs bathroom until I barfed up the stairs trying to get to the bathroom we were allowed to use. Also weren’t supposed to go in the front room or dining room, though we never had company and the dining room table was always covered in junk. We didn’t have a guest bedroom, but the one time my grandparents came to visit I had to let them use my room and wasn’t allowed back in it until they left.

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Background_Chemist_8@reddit

Only rooms I wasn't allowed in was parents' bedroom and the attic (which had been my oldest brother's former bedroom and still had boxes of his stuff in it that my mom didn't want me and my friends getting into, including his old dirty magazine collection).

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Temporary-Warning883@reddit

There was the tiny kitchen attached to the dining area (calling it a dining room would be a bit much) which led to the living room. Both the dining area and living room had sliding glass doors outside. Also there was my room, my brother’s room, and the master bedroom. None of these areas were off limits that would be ridiculous lol. We also had a garage where the washer and dryer were. Also not off limits.

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Hippy_Lynne@reddit

Nope. We didn't really go in the living room because there wasn't a TV in there but we weren't prohibited from going in there. We weren't exactly prohibited from going in my mom's room either, but we generally didn't unless there was a reason. We also had a den with the TV/couches/ect and a converted patio which was where all our toys were when we were kids, and a more secluded hangout once we were teenagers. Our personal bedrooms were our castles, my parents didn't care how much time we spent in there. Most of my friends had a similar setup, with the exception being that we obviously never had any reason to go in their parents' room or the living room. I don't recall being specifically told never to go in there, but there wasn't really anything for us to do in there anyway so there was no reason for us to.

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notsosecretshipper@reddit

My parents bedroom wasn't off-limits, but we needed a reason to be in there (such as a sibling is watching the living room tv but your show is coming on). Their walk-in closet, however, was 100% a no fly zone. Do not enter, for any reason unless you are specifically sent to put something away or retrieve it.

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iaperson2015@reddit

No, we were a poor family of six so we couldn’t afford nice furniture or to close off space with so many people. When we went to our grandparents’ houses, though, there were always rooms we couldn’t go in because kids were too messy to be allowed in the nice rooms. 😂

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chainmailler2001@reddit

Parents bedroom was the only limited access place. We were not allowed in their room without them there. Otherwise we had run of the house. We weren't rich and didn't pretend to be.

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New_Stats@reddit

None but we had a living room and dining room that we barely ever used

But then we got a computer and the living room became a living room with a computer desk shoved in there awkwardly

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mistegirl@reddit

My parents are boomers. The main house I grew up in was small, so just their room was off limits.

Then we lived with my grandma for years. The dining room wasn't really used other than holidays, but you had to walk through it to get to the living room, so not really totally off limits.

Funny thing is now my mom has a large living room she never uses. It's not strictly off limits, but it's a large room, with a dining area.. bigger than the room they actually use for a living room, that just sits there. Nice big leather couch and chair, big coffee table and all. Just, there. I dont get it.

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59apache01@reddit

Never experienced that, but we never really had "nice" things either.

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Organic_Eggplant_323@reddit

We had full run of the house as kids but now as an adult I don’t allow anyone into the guest bedroom, guest bath or powder room unless they want to take over the responsibility of keeping them clean 🤷‍♀️

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GoldenC0mpany@reddit

No, every room was for the taking at my house.

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Greedy-Clerk9326@reddit

None of the house was off limits as a kid.

And none of my house is off limits for my kids. My kids know they aren’t allowed to use power tools unless I’m around, but they’re allowed in the shop to use the 3D printer or grab a screwdriver.

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herseyhawkins33@reddit

Yeah we didn't eat regularly in the dining room despite it being right next to the kitchen. The living room wasn't off limits. But it was used more for "visiting" than hanging out. That'd mostly be in the den where the TV was.

I do remember my friend around the block with basically the same house, and the lights were basically never on in the living room. Essentially making it "off limits." Other than that though things were pretty open.

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chunkerton_chunksley@reddit

We werent around in the front room, with white couches. We weren't allowed in my parents' bedroom. In fairness, i was pretty much always a peanut butter mess.

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TacoNomad@reddit

You had way more house than we did. We used all the rooms in our trailer.

Then we moved in with my grandma and me and my brothers shared a room. Then my cousins were about to move in too, and 6 kids were going to be in the unfinished attic, somehow rapidly handymaned up enough for 6 kids.

Luckily we moved out before my cousins got back from Alaska

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Global-Jury8810@reddit

We were simply expected not to invade each other’s rooms, and this included our parents bedroom. They were stricter about their own bedroom, they didn’t really want us playing with any of their stuff.

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TinyGIR@reddit

None. But in my childhood home I voluntarily didn't go into the basement storage area because it was weird and had cobwebs.

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KW5625@reddit (OP)

Our first house had that too, an old coal room. My dad kept stuff in there he didn't want me messing with.

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spookyhellkitten@reddit

None. I grew up with a single teen mom at first then when she met my stepdad he came from a family of 8 kids who shared 2 bedrooms, that wasn't a concept he was familiar with so neither striped for it.

My daughters best friend's grandparents have a formal sitting room type area that is totally decked out for Christmas and they leave it that way year round so they only really use the room seasonally, but even it isn't off limits.

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Grand-Information942@reddit

Nope. We were poor so there were no extra rooms to spare. We didn’t spend much time on the house if we could help it.

We didn’t spend much have a living room that held spider plants, a couch and the stereo system complete with 8tracks, vinyl and cassettes. It wasn’t off-limits but we didn’t care to hang out there because there wasn’t anything to do in there.

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Funkopedia@reddit

My parents are Silent Gen (although those labels don't really apply in the old country), and refugees, so we had 12 people in a 4 bedroom house (with a huge attic and an entire story of basement). Eventually it got less crowded as people moved out, but it was never really feasible to set aside any space.

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bikingmpls@reddit

Lived in apartments my entire childhood. Now my living room is kids play area.

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midlifeShorty@reddit

We had a formal living room and dining room that were off limits.

We also didn't really play in the guest room.... it is really small, so never really came up. Our house is/was pretty large, so the breakfast room was plenty large enough to eat in and the family room and our bedrooms were sufficient.

But yeah, having weird formal spaces like that is definitely a thing of the past.

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