38 Comments

Nothing on the bathroom counters or the nightstands. I’m not saying you need to leave your retainer in the shot, but if there’s not a cabinet and there’s not a toothbrush, someone is lying.

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

All the “natural” light. Not every room in your house can be lit equally brightly at all times of the day.

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

Until I saw Catherine Newman's house tour, I didn't realize all the things I was internalizing about how a house should be. Hide the stuff that's necessary for life! No one in this house - including the cat - has bodily functions! We need to make this house we live in look like nobody lives here! It was so good to see a house that actual people live in celebrated, rather than a house were an impeccable mom plays on the lush, white carpet with artisanal wood toys for a few minutes before being airlifted out of the room to preserve the integrity of the space.

So maybe I don't like traditional house tours?

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

White bedding. How.

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

Entire houses, drywall to furnishings, with of-the-minute aesthetics. Unless you built your house and bought everything in it this past year, something gets a bit dated or isn't fully one LOOK, you know?

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Aug 25, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

Drives me crazy when showers have no soap or shampoo in them? Like, what’s going on? Do you have a shower caddy hiding in a closet that you carry with you every day like you’re in a dorm? Don’t you have a few bottles of mostly, but not entirely used up hair & body products that you can’t bring yourself to throw away because they aren’t empty, but you don’t like using because it kinda makes you a little itchy or smells like someone you used to know and no longer talk to? Or something. Just me?

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Hidden toys or only *aesthetic* toys out!

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

Every single picture, on every single wall, is lined up PERFECTLY with all the others--not a one is hanging off kilter even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of an inch!!! I have used levels, yardsticks, tape measures, and even had other people help me, and my shit does not/cannot look like it does in these tours. (I loved that Catherine's weren't all perfect either!)

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The perfectly clean, beautifully lit and clutter-free laundry room that looks like no one has ever actually done laundry in it. C’mon! We know you have to wash all of those cloth diapers and reusable cleaning cloths somewhere.

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Aug 24, 2022·edited Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

The perfectly arranged twig/single hydrangea blossom/perfectly arched flowering branch out of some clay pot vase thingy always drives me crazy.

Why does it bug me so much? It's the nod to modern simplicity which is a white aesthetic, especially the CA clay loving/bohemian bourgeois look- which as my other rural dwelling friends implies, you not only have the means to live simply in that you can afford to shop regularly, and heaven forbid you just gather some scruffy blooms and shove in a mason jar, while you dump your 25 lb bag of rice into a plastic bin you bought at the hardware store- Instead you decant your 32 oz of rice perfectly into a glass jar with simple cork lid on your open shelved kitchen shelves of reclaimed wood, with your hand thrown heavy-as hell pottery in shades of clay/sand/taupe (vomit vomit vomit), of which of course you have a matching but quirky organic shaped vased to match, in which you place your single twig from the native tree you paid way too much money for that doesn't actually serve any function in your yard other than it looks good, and says you are "hip" to some gardening trends (v sole smith just wrote a great newsletter on gardening and purity culture) since you don't grow any of your own food, b/c you don't really have rough hands from home tending, since you have paid help for that, but still, a blossom in a vase is a nice touch, and besides it shows that you made an effort, just not too much effort, b/c you are so zen and your home is so peaceful, and then the magazine of course calls it "a jaunty touch amidst a serene and grounded space."

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Maybe it's because I am currently in puppy hell but I feel triggered by the spotless built in dog crates that seem to be all the rage. And where's the dog hair? The half chewed dog toys?

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

Walk-in closets, but probably because I'm jealous that I don't have one too since I live in a tiny NYC apartment where we store clothes on window sills and on chairs. Sigh.

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Aug 25, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

The bizarre ways that the owners, and their children, if featured, pose. I don’t have a dining room (three kids in a townhouse 🙃) but if I did, I assume I wouldn’t stand next to the window looking out dreamily. I also don’t routinely sit on a bed with all three of my children nestled on my lap and no one fighting, crying, or screaming. They look like aliens who got training on how to pose like catalog models, and we’re supposed to believe that these are authentic snapshots of their domestic lives.

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Aug 24, 2022Liked by Sara Petersen

CLEAN COUNTERTOPS

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The obsession with decanting in a pantry bugs me. The waste of buying packaging so you can aesthetically have a 'pleasing' view of your kids' snacks or cereal or whatever. The nadir was Khloe Kardashian's pantry, with basket after basket of single serve snacks (she had one child, who is eating all these snacks?) and the glass jars with cookies arranged in a pattern on the top shelf with a spotlight on them: they were for decoration, not to be eaten. Lazy Susan after Lazy Susan with salad dressings, etc. No one needs all that food in the house for one adult and one small child (ok, there's an assistant or two who needs to be fed, and family coming over), it was for the 'Gram. And that's gross to me: the overconsumption of purchasing food/accessories for a pretty picture.

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Just absolutely bare surfaces everywhere. Do you really take your coffee pot out and put it away every morning? You don't keep a sponge or paper towels accessible in your kitchen? Do you really make yourself do that much extra work every day just for the aesthetic vibe?

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Actually, I was not in love with Catherine Newman’s house tour and I still don’t understand the comments about it. I don’t really want to see a house tour on a blog that looks like my house before it is cleaned and straightened! Who wants to see clothes piled on a chair? Who has a picture taken of a bathroom with the toilet open? We put the lid down on toilets before leaving the bathroom (actually before flushing)! I try to make sure my pictures are straight on the wall…admittedly, that is one of my pet peeves, to leave pictures crooked. I like a house tour to look like I might want to copy some of the ideas…or at least to admire what someone has done to their house, not like the photos were taken before the housekeeper came!

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