The Aspirational World of HGTV 🏚->🏡
Interior decor becomes much sexier when you're watching from an actual house
Welcome to Only Child, where we pour cereal and milk at the same time, and hope they sort of twirl around each other like DNA and then mix in the bowl.
I’d like to take a quick moment to address an issue with my last post. I forgot to include the image of this^ smiling green tea that has become a part of this newsletter’s brand. That was inexcusable. Forgive me for my sins.
That Said…
I hope to make it up to you this week by writing about yet another, very different genre of TV show.
On HGTV’s staple program Love It or List It, two middle-aged entrepreneurs battle each other for the hearts (and wallets) of some homeowning couple. One of the two renovates the couple’s current house, demolishing walls and realigning pillows on the couch until the place looks like an Airbnb listing, while the other seeks a new house for them given some criteria. The couple is shepherded back and forth between houses for sale while a friendly construction crew gleefully sledgehammers away half of their current home, a process I find thrilling and cathartic to watch.
Of course, the couple itself doesn’t see this carnage. They instead argue over the natural light and cabinet space of all the candidate homes they visit. At the end, there’s a saccharine reveal where we see the before & after for each room in the couple’s renovated house, in which the wife gushes over the beautiful new decor, the accent pieces on the walls, and the new color contrasts, while the husband grunts and admits that it was worth going over their budget. Then, after a suspenseful commercial break, they decide whether they’re going to stay in their renovated home or move to a new one.
Having been at my parents’ own home in San Jose for most of May now that we’re all fully vaccinated, I’ve watched more of this show, as well as other HGTV staples (Flip or Flop, My Lottery Dream Home, Home Town, etc.) than my heart and soul were prepared for. Each of these shows shamelessly steals production ideas from the others. For example, there’s Property Brothers, where twin brothers renovate a home that’s on the market so a couple will buy it, and then there’s Unsellable Houses, the exact inverse, where twin sisters renovate a couple’s home and then put it on the market. I’ll admit that I zone out for most of these programs until the big before/after reveal, but they are comforting. You never know when you’ll see a house whose bathroom or fireplace will trigger a daydream about your ideal home.
Consuming this deluge of homeowner propaganda has tickled a nerve in me. Perhaps it’s because I’m 25 years old and am new to the Q2 of life. Some of my peers are buying property and losing their hair (related, maybe?), so I’m naturally worried about both. I haven’t yet scoured Zillow for unbelievably expensive dream homes just to imagine living in them, but I know most of the Internet has, and it tempts me. Plus, the scope of homes to choose from has changed for many of us. As the pandemic has made more workplaces fully remote, many have taken to the nomad life, traveling from city to city, Airbnb to Airbnb, driving rocks like the pioneers used to, deciding where they may want to settle down. Indeed, homes are on all of our minds. I don’t think I know anyone my age who doesn’t have some idea what they want their eventual home to look like.
I have a very vague idea for my eventual nest, but the image needs work. Right now it’s mostly just lots of pillows and artwork. Big TV. Open space, huge kitchen, smaller living room, low ceilings. I’d like my home to feel cozy. Good speakers, maybe a humidifier. Lots of colors, bright but soft ones. Some red here and there. Plenty of trinkets (I don’t like a place to feel nude) that preferably involve flower patterns.
It’s funny how as I grow up, the things I used to love about a home have changed. I used to like specific features about the house that stimulated my child-brain—a huge basement to play-fight villains with my lightsaber, a nice countertop to lay spreads of food on, big windows to stare out of. Later on, from college onwards, choosing an apartment to rent became largely about location—how close is it to bars, restaurants, the “action?”—and then about space and having in-unit washer/dryer and a good kitchen. Now these hypnotizing HGTV shows have shown me a criterion I’d considered before but dismissed: a home is an investment. You want to buy a home that you can eventually sell for better. This idea makes sense to me intellectually, but it takes time to absorb deep down.
Some Sort of Profound Takeaway
And so watching these colorful HGTV shows while sitting in my parents’ furnished home, walking around in a quiet suburban neighborhood, going to bed at a reasonable time every night, and eating my mom’s real, well-cooked meals instead of bowls of incompatibly mixed lentils and meatless sausages, has me thinking about the value of a home. Not the sentimental parts, of memories or people, but the more rational parts. The ways to arrange furniture, to structure a basement, to decorate a living room, etc. When to buy, when to sell, what kinds of homes are “starter” homes. It’s a more grounded, rational way of thinking about something I so closely associate with personal feelings.
The other side of this pendulum swing is difficult, too. If the sentimental value of a home is stuck in the past, I feel like the rational part is stuck in the future, planning renovations and moves, anticipating good times to buy or sell property, and “leveling up” once a home’s been outgrown, like it’s a video game. It’s cold and detached. But it’s hard to avoid treating a home like a part of your past or future, because by definition, the whole point is to get used to it. It’s the easiest thing in the world to take advantage of. I know that “just stay present, wherever you are!” is a bit of a cliché to end a newsletter post on, so I won’t, especially since living vicariously through the life transitions of various wealthy white couples is anything but present. Just something to think about.
The truth is, I love seeing some good interior decor and have an episode of My Lottery Dream Home to catch, so I’m gonna end my analysis there. Leave the following in the comments please 🧡🧡🧡:
What you value in a home
Your favorite Zillow listing(s)
Other Things Of Note
The beautiful work of creative nonfiction, “WOVEN: What’s the Story?” by Nikki Volcipelli. She shared this piece in my writing group and it’s finally come to fruition so please take a look and have your feelings plucked and strummed like an Irish harp.
This blog post by David of Raptitude about how Western society wrongly dismisses “alternative medicine,” even if it works, because science hasn’t proved it to work.
This article by The Unpublishable on how small attitudes towards eastern medicine cultivate an overall racism against Asian products.
Only Child is a bi-weekly newsletter where I find excitement in the mundane. Tell your friends and enemies to subscribe!
—Chuckry Vengadam (@churrthing)
Yep, a home is like no other place:! The tv shows show that. Home has the right people, right amount of space for everyone to do their thing and congregate together too. Best of all, it makes memories. I'm glad you came home. Home felt complete:)