Unhalfbricking with some sage words on the comments situation here... and a wonderful contribution to the domesticity discussion....
'The notion that your home should be a way to show off your taste, or your wealth, or your miraculous, laboratory-like cleanliness is anathema. Those homes are tombs, the modern equivalent of the burial chambers of the pharoahs where they lay surrounded by their wealth, their art, their mummified pets. It jolts me every time I return to the family home and realise that there are no longer any books there...well, no books in the living spaces of the house. All the books are concealed in the bedrooms upstairs, a few on shelves, almost as many in piles on the floors that are incongruous in a house otherwise devoid of clutter. It's nearly imposssible to relax there - the emptiness of the livingroom is oppressive, the cream carpet and the unstable sidetables a nerve-wracking combination.'
Yes, the emptiness of people's living rooms.... that strange, oppressive vacancy....