There is a specific social awkwardness that everybody has encountered from one side and nobody from both.
Visiting an unfamiliar house, you register its smell immediately — not unpleasant necessarily,…
Source: Wikipedia
A radio left running is a completely different object from one somebody switches on to listen to. It becomes the background of a house, and everyone absorbs it without…
Soap is one of the oldest manufactured substances and one of the most consequential, and almost nobody can explain what it does.
The common assumption is that soap is a…
A single phone in a shared space produced an entire social system, and everyone who lived through it remembers the same rules. Here are twelve.
1. It Lived in the…
In the 1970s, finishing the basement to create a "rec room" was a hallmark of the American home, a casual, kid-friendly, party-ready space separate from the formal living room upstairs.…
Source: Wikipedia
Before clothes became cheap enough to throw away, every household had a repair department, and it lived in a box. It might have been a wicker basket, a wooden…