Sledgehammers on TV, family dynamics, and clutter

I found out something last week (h/t Greg Lindsay) that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Apparently the reason that HGTV shows feature so many open concept home remodels (i.e., a combined dining room, living room, and kitchen space) is because guys love watching guys smash things with sledgehammers. And what better reason to bring out a sledgehammer than to knock down allll the walls?

From an NPR interview:

RONDA KAYSEN: I spoke with HGTV executives. And the reason that they are so big on open concept is because it gets the male viewers. Like, guys like to watch sledgehammers and, like, taking out walls.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: (Laughter).

KAYSEN: So, like, it's for TV. It's not for, like, what's the best interests of the house, necessarily.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is crazy.

KAYSEN: And "House Hunters"...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wait a second. Are you telling me that the open-plan concept, which we are all prisoner to, is because dudes like to watch HGTV and sledgehammers?

KAYSEN: Dudes will only watch HGTV if there's sledgehammers. This is how you get your boyfriend to sit with you on the couch and watch it if you get to watch Jonathan Scott, like, knock down a wall.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I can't even tell you how betrayed I feel…

Exhibit A: Observe the looks of satisfaction that can only be derived from watching someone sledgehammer a wall. Image source

While HGTV and its empires (cough cough Chip & Joanna Gaines) are hugely influential, they’re obviously not the only reason people desire open concept homes.

No matter how many hand-wringing think pieces call for us to bring back ROOMS (you can check out a couple here in The Atlantic and CityLab), people continue to buy, rent, and build homes with a combined a living room, dining room, and kitchen.  

Why? And how can we make sure these spaces work for their inhabitants without sheetrocking the ground floor of all of suburban America, U.K., Australia, Netherlands, etc. etc.?

I think the answer lies in how these spaces shape family dynamics. And in clutter.

An example open concept space from HGTV’s Fixer Upper. Image source

To help understand people's desire for open concept spaces, let’s take a tiny detour down history lane.

The open concept home is rooted in mid-century modernism and its philosophy. The idea was to create homes that are streamlined, usable, and, importantly, democratic. 

Before open plan homes became popular, living rooms and kitchens were typically placed at opposite ends of a house. I hadn’t noticed this pattern before, but in 19th and early 20th century homes, the formal parlour was placed at the front of the house, and the kitchen at the very back (this is certainly true of my 1906 Montreal apartment!). Kitchens were utilitarian work zones, and formal parlours were cramped with furniture and knickknacks. A long hallway connected the two with bedrooms around the home’s perimeter. In this arrangement, different groups of people — men, women, children, servants—were relegated to different areas of the home.

Along with societal changes from women’s entry into the workforce, the open concept floor plan changed all of that. Servants were long gone, and women, men, and children were meant to share the home space on equal footing. Following the "philosophy of open plan, children, their activities, and their objects are not ‘banished’ to outside or to bedrooms, but are centrally and communally located.”

One reason that families, in particular, continue to seek out an open concept home is because sharing one large space allows parents to interact with and watch over their children. A parent can be doing something in the kitchen area while kids are within their line of sight as they play in the living room area.

A study of families living in open concept homes reveals this parental motivation. “Numerous participants spoke of how having one big area helped them watch children. Catherine [one mother] speaks of her family space as allowing them to keep an “eye over” and “control” (her terms) her children.” For another mother (Moira), “open plan facilitated visual surveillance and oversight of children’s actives, but also a sense that Moira was in control.”

(As an aside, this is similar to how C-suite executives feel about open plan offices. Executives prefer an open plan office more than their workers, like admin or professional staff, presumably because executives want to observe and interact with their workers more than workers want to be observed and to interact with executives. Similarly kids—the office workers of the family in this analogy—are likely less desirous of parental oversight than are parents.)

If the big upside of the open concept is that you can see across the whole dang thing, then so is its downside. Because the democracy of open concept homes brings along clutter. And toys. And nowhere in the space to hide from all the mess.

Open concept spaces are large — averaging 550 sq ft in new American single family homes. If there is clutter in one part of the open space, then it’s likely visible from anywhere else in the space. This can create unease and compel constant cleaning to keep things under control. In the study mentioned above, one mother, Jenny, described the tyranny imposed by her open concept home: “In the kitchen if I’ve got a few things on the bench it looks messy so I’m forever trying to clean things up… and because it’s so open you walk in and you virtually see the whole house, so everything’s got to be tidy.” The “mess was visible, on display, and, in the context of Jenny’s standards of tidiness, induced anxiety.”

Clutter, real and perceived, can be stressful, especially for women. Clutter can make people feel out of control, and, as in Jenny’s case, lead to stress and anxiety. In line with this idea, women who perceive their homes to be cluttered have disrupted stress responses and more negative moods. Clutter can also worsen parent-child relationships by increasing children’s emotionality and mothers’ authoritarian style (e.g., physical punishment, punitive strategies, verbal commands), perhaps as a result of trying to regain lost control.

So, what can be done to improve open concept homes?

Families living in open concept homes have devised a number of workable solutions to minimize clutter and its associated stress. 

• One solution is to get Victorian and to ‘banish' the kids and toys to a kids’ room, playroom, or (my favorite term) a rumpus room. In the rumpus room, kids can make a mess without creating clutter for the rest of the family. Just as parents seek a sense of control over the family’s shared open concept space, an added benefit of rumpus rooms is that kids get an environment that they can control. Of course, this only works for families with kids old enough to not require oversight.

• Another solution is to get super minimal in the open concept space and to get rid of everything that is not functional or absolutely necessary. Yes, that might mean open shelving, decorations, knickknacks, and anything else that contributes to visual clutter in the space. This aggressive solution might be best-suited for parents who are introverted, as introverts function best with less outside stimulation from their environment. Left to their own devices, they create home spaces that are uncluttered and sparsely decorated.

• A different solution, applicable to families with young kids, is to divide the open space using furniture to create smaller contained areas. If a toddler wants to throw toys around in one area, at least that mess will be better contained than if the whole space were fair game.

More generally, space dividers seem to be an ideal solution for inhabitants of open concept spaces — not only for families, but also for couples, roommates, or single individuals. Imagine being able to divide off a messy kitchen during a dinner party, or not worry about cleaning up a kids’ play area when not in use. Sounds pretty good!

That’s why I was surprised to find few inexpensive commercial solutions that don’t require either extensive construction or custom work. 

For those able to pay for custom carpentry or who are really DIY, one solution is to add pocket or sliding doors between dining room, living room, and kitchen areas. Another idea is to add privacy nooks around the open space to contain activities (e.g., a kid play area), to create small calm environments in the chaos (e.g., a reading seat), or to divide up the space.

There are also existing solutions for open offices that could be translated to help with open concept homes in the future. Movable walls have made it to mainstream (well, almost mainstream) office design, so why not home design, too? Floor-to-ceiling dividing curtains are another solution from the office world that could help create smaller areas and minimize noise that inevitably reverberates through a large open space. 

Since the popularity of open concept homes shows no signs of slowing, I hope that new innovative solutions will help these homes actually live up to their ideals — as streamlined, usable, and democratic spaces.