Being someone who actually has PTSD, I found this thread to be pretty funny (not being sarcastic). Mine came from an event when I was 19 that involved murder, but that's long boring story.

Back to topic, mine for decorating would have to be the really bright lime green, pumpkin orange and yellow wallpaper that use to hang in the hallway of my childhood home-it was awful! The house itself, I think had yellow and pumpkin colors all over it, till my mother changed everything except the hallway wallpaper.

Even though I would never on purpose put those colors together, when I see that color combination it does remind me of my childhood, which is strangely comforting. :)

My PTSD as it pertains to decorating is all about texture. The basement walls were texturized with sand paint. I remember a girl scout fire drill that had me climbing the wall, so I could open a very small basement window which I had to climb out of. To this day, I love texture, but it has to be soft! Oh...and yes...the walls were green.

Oh I forgot one. Remember those peel and stick mirror squares? The ones with the gold swirls? Yeah, we had a wall covered in those.

ROFLOL - you really should have been posting a long time ago as I love your writing style.

I think overall I don't really have any except for orange kitchen cabinet doors. Can't stand orange now either.

My trauma surrounds the 1960's spacious split level I grew up in. The ridiculous lay out of this home was really only suited for young families since each level had only 3-4 rooms and you were constantly navigating steps. My parents hung onto this beloved home until their early 80's when it was no longer feasible for an older person to live safely since the steps presented a constant fall risk. The attempt to decorate the split level in a colonial/traditional style was never really quite believable and somewhat incongruent despite wood floors (covered in wall to wall carpeting) and some antiques.

I can't believe you all - not ONE of you likes my taste in decorating as it's morphed over the years?

I think I still have at least 1 of everything you've listed...

the plastic covered furniture post was funny - I remember homes where people did that AND last yr I went over to my sister's house and she had most all of her furniture (dustable kind) covered in plastic.

seems her IL's were coming to visit from IN, she'd dusted and didn't plan to dust AGAIN until they left so she draped it all in plastic. I'd never seen anyone do THAT before - but I did 'file' it for future use.
shoot - her MIL is in her 80's and can barely see! she can hardly see the furniture, let alone dust.

I missed the whole pie chart thing, but think this thread is hilarious! Welcome to GW,udontknowme!

I had the same needle experience (sans ER visit) with shag carpeting.

My mom just removed those mirrored tiles (well, they weren't swirled, just plain) from my mom's yellow hallway that led to the pink BR at one end, gray/green/pink bath in middle, and gold roses-wallpapered MBR at other end (at least I convinced her to pull up the *installed* gold shag WTW to expose the oak there - but she didn't have holes from tack strips filled and screened when she had the other floors refinished).

My parents were prehistoric house-flippers. We moved into the house that scarred me for life in June 1975.
I had a bedroom that was wallpapered in brown grasscloth on 3 walls, with the 4th being an entire wall of 12x12 cork flooring tiles in alternating shades of tan and brown-it was the world's largest bulletin board.
The living room had a huge vaulted ceiling with a two story brick fireplace that was open on two sides. The entire room including the brick and the ceiling was painted turquoise when we moved in. I can remember my dad painting 4 coats of white on every surface in that room-it took an entire month of his free time.
The kitchen had floor to ceiling Japanese Shoji Screens covering the windows.
The two bathtubs in the house had wrought iron gates in front of them that were painted to match the tiles in those bathrooms. They weighed a TON, and would catch your fingers or feet on the way in and out of the tub.
We had the obligatory pickled wood paneling in the basement.
We only lived in that house for a little more than a year, and I think we sold it for 30% more than we paid for it after only tackling a few of the things the house needed.
I'd share more but I have to go back to looking at a bunch of green paint samples.

When I was 13 our family moved to a house where I would have my own bathroom. Kewl!

This bathroom had maroon toilet, sink and tub and my parents somehow thought they would tone it down by putting up fake wood paneling (?!) and hanging a pink/orange gingham curtain and shower curtain, along with bright pink towels. Oh, and pink shag carpet (yes, in the bathroom).

Not to bring the party to a halt but in defense of all parents and their decorating choices:

You do realize your own kids will be making fun of all the choices you're placing in your homes today? Sure, we think our choices are the best ever but 20-30 years from now, by what ever technology exists then, your darling kids will be poking gentle fun at you.

And even worse? They'll probably be able to access the GW achives and see how we agonized with each other about what shade of green to use!

Perish the thought but they'll probably be using hot pink & lime, harvest gold & avocado, fake wood and shag carpet.

Luckily, my Mum doesn't have/didn't have any interest in decorating. We never had shag carpet, we never had the colors that many of you "enjoyed", we didn't have fake wood cars or appliances. We did have a little plaque that read:

Although you'll find the house a mess
Come in, sit down, converse
It doesn't always look this way
Some days it's even worse

The sentiment expressed was very true.

Canned pears with mayo and cheese... i've never heard of that and never did it. I love all three of them but would never think to put them together. Whhy would you even try it!? ha

I'm also giggling over the creamed corn blanket.

Luckily I missed all of the 70s. So it's blue and mauve for both my sister and I. I didn't realize until after I moved out that there were other colors in the world. :) Ha I love green, gold, and red. My future kids will probably like blue and mauve!

I really, really, really want to play...but I can't.

hhireno said "You do realize your own kids will be making fun of all the choices you're placing in your homes today? Sure, we think our choices are the best ever but 20-30 years from now, by what ever technology exists then, your darling kids will be poking gentle fun at you."

Not necessarily.

My mother was a decorator and designed the new build we moved into in 1958. It was built into a hill and had hardwood floors, with carpet in only one room. There were *rules*. None of the three bathrooms could have the toilet showing when you opened the door. The garage was the same deal. Must be side-loading as garages were ugly, in her opinion.

The kitchen had a built-in stainless oven and stove top. She mixed good quality new furniture with a lot of antique. Textures, fabrics and even a bit of wallpaper were all timeless. I still remember every detail of that house and could move into it today.

When she downsized, in 1968, we moved into a fixer-upper. No avocado anywhere. She took down a wall to open the space up. Painted the kitchen cupboards a wedgewood blue with pewter hardware and had white appliances. Sound familiar?

So, no, I don't have PTSD from my mother. However, my aunt was a different story. Like LAX, the memories of plastic everywhere are still horrible. She even had plastic runners over her ugly carpeting.

My only run in with the dreaded avocado was my first adult apartment. It was in the 70s, in a new building, and the first question the management had was "do you want that in gold or avocado". I chose gold.

Maybe I don't recoil from green, today, because I wasn't traumatized. When I get around to painting my office, it's going to be Baby Turtle. :)

We had grass-like wallpaper that went up from the bottom floor to the top floor in our '70s townhouse. My poor mom . . .she said she agonized over the choice, but once my dad put it up, she HATED it, but knew that was that, since she felt bad for my dad.

Oh, and our cats climbed it, too. That's another sad story-- those were the cats that got sent to "the farm."

Overall, though I liked our house. We had some '70s things like ugly green carpet, ugly brownish green carpet, but we also had some interesting things . . .like the big chac mool art in the kitchen, Moroccan rugs in the living room, and Guatemalan tablecloths. I liked my circus wallpaper and the brown and silver wallpaper in the bathroom.

My own house gives me some heebie jeebies. Really, really, REALLY ugly bathroom downstairs, those acoustic (gulp) tiles throughout all the rooms upstairs (bedrooms, hallway, but at least not the bathroom), and fake wood paneling under the wallpaper that the POs painted . . .apparently, there is wallpaper on the CEILING of our dining room that has been painted over. No $ to fix those things, though, so I'm trying to make the best of it with my meager budget!

udontknowme: You have a lot of making up to do, for being just a lurker and depriving us of your humor!!!!

roobear: I'm sorry. :( No one should have to go through that.

Walls painted red!!!! Hate that! We had a long room with pinkish flagstone floors. It was a livingroom at one end and a diningroom at the other end. A decorator told my mom to pick an accent color, like the red color of her chinese budda statues and paint the dinning room walls that color to make the room "pop"! We had fu dog statues, a budda with his hands raised, budda head book ends, a budda meditating, quan yin, etc. I think red walls with pink flagstone is gross!!!! :0) or maybe just red budda statues. :0)

{{gwi:1758080}}

I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed reading this thread! It is a hoot!!!!

Before we remodeled an added onto our house, it was wall-to-wall, and I mean wall-to-wall carpet. That included the kitchen and bathrooms. My dh was single and it was your typical bachelor pad. I love the guy, but decorating isn't why I married him, lol. The house was built in the late 70's and the orange shag carpet was still in the kitchen and bathrooms when I moved in in 1997. Can you say, ewwwwww! We now have hardwood flooring throughout the house with only a few accent rugs (it is sooo nice!).

Anele, thanks it probably wasn't appropriate for me to mention and must have seemed weird. It's been over ten years and I'm just trying to be ok with it all.

I sympathize with you on your house, as we just purchased our first and inherited some ugly as well. :)

Hostagrams and I are about the same age, I reckon...

My childhood was wonderfully happy, despite our lack of anything resembling ready money (widows, spinsters and orphans all...), but our circumstances certainly influenced my household nuttiness.

We lived in rented houses, so had very little control over things like wallpaper, and there was never a renovation of any kind. Everything was serviceable, nothing was special unless it happened to be there already, and we were content to be safe and warm.

Nobody knew how to fix anything properly, so unless we had the money to hire someone, things were jury-rigged, or just stayed broken. Everyone would rather read a book or play a game than polish furniture or do anything resembling decorating anyway. Tricking out the house or being too concerned with clinical cleanliness was seen, I think, as a kind of unseemly vanity.

Example: I remember a horrid second-(or third- or fourth-) hand, hard, green sofa, with a beautiful 18th century table beside it...one pad foot broken, with a piece of cardboard under it to stop it wobbling, numerous rings from sweating iced tea glasses on the top... and a lovely neo-classical white marble lamp with a yellowed and threadbare silk shade, and a 45-watt light bulb when a 75 was needed.

So I learned to fix things. Even in our renting days, I always got permission to personalize the place with paint or other minor improvements. I love old, patinated furniture and silver, and things with a history, but I can't abide a threadbare rug, a ratty lampshade, a cheap picture frame, a yellowed anything that should be white, a water mark on a wooden table, or grubby residue on the woodwork or the switchplates. I want the mirrors and picture glass sparkling, and the wood furniture polished (gleaming, not glossy), and the drawers to open and close smoothly, and the upholstery plump.

I have learned to tolerate a modest level of cat claw damage out of love of furry heartbeats, and I would still rather read than clean, but shabbiness gives me flashbacks!

Funny thread :-) Just the other day my daughter was telling her husband about my house when we first moved in. It had red and orange blend shag in the living room, dining room, hallway and stairs!!!!!!! It was new to the previous owners but I hated it. We knew we had to wait to save to take it out but she and her two brothers hated it so much that they took a very hot large pot and put in on the living room floor and it burned right through so then we refinished the hardwood floors immediately. They told me it was an accident,they didn't think it was that hot, but 40 years later I learn the truth!!!!! hahahhaa so they avoided the ptss.

Wall to wall shag carpet. My parents had it in our old house growing up, it was gross. My current house had red shag everywhere when we bought it, and it was even more gross. It had 40 years worth of dust embedded into it. It just makes my hair stand on end to think of all the yuck that was in them. Now my home has bare floors everywhere with the exception of an area rug in my living room.

We rented a home owned by a Saudi Arabian prince. Orange shag carpeting in the family room and halls, abutting the red shag carpeting in the master bedroom, green shag carpeting in some other rooms, and yellow shag carpeting in one of the bedrooms. You can get an idea of how bad it was when I tell you that the bright yellow shag carpeting was a relief after the others.

It was the orange and red that really got to me. Of course, the orange shag carpeting was in a room paneled in imitation dark brown wood masonite, with a red brick fireplace wall.

When we bought our home, we kept the floors bare for several years.

Suero, your Saudi prince story reminds me of my DH's cautionary mantra which is that "bad taste need not be inexpensive!"

parma, I forgot about the yellowing plastic runner over the w2w carpet. I can actually still smell it. Blech.

To be fair, though, plastic was a phase my mother went through in the '70s by the mid '80s she'd moved onto leather Miami Vice style and now her home is open, airy, yet still warm and homey.

Well this is a bit long but it just has to be said I've been holding it in for so many years. I am so blessed that as I grew up my Dear Mother had wonderful taste in decorating and was very talented. Her acumen for architectural and decorating design was prized and praised by friends, family and clients. Our home was a very large one with one room or another in some stage of construction or re-decor for as long as I can remember. She would sit with me as a very young child showing me colors and patterns to mix and match. Texture and finishes and periods OH MY! All the whys and why nots of building and remodeling and decorating were steeped into me from infancy. My toys were swatches and paint chips instead of rattles and teething rings. As I grew, I was happy with colored pencils and drawing pads, rulers and compasses so I could design rooms and furniture. Re-making and or re-covering furniture was a weekly exercise I could cut in and edge a room by 6 years old. I was critiquing and rearranging home decor of my friends Moms before I was out of grade school. Most of them appreciated the changes I would show them. Furniture placement and accessories can be a big factor in the overall appeal of any room. I designed and executed my first paying job at 15. No not a bit of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the decor of my youth.
On the other side (in the late 60s) the first MIL's house ARRRGGGHHH. Thank goodness Kens sisters warned me how much pride Mama had in her "home decorating sense". I still have a nightmare once in a while where I am trapped in this house unable to speak or think of something nice to say with things growing larger and looming over me............ARRRGGGHHH STOP!. The first time I saw that house I wished someone would poke my eyes out or rip out my tongue. If I couldn't see it I was going to be okay and if I had to see it just keep me from saying anything to the Future MIL about GAUDY!!! Such a sweet wonderful woman with absolutely no taste what so ever. No wait I take it back. She had taste, it was just hideous!!!! She had so much STUFF there was no room for people and if there was a flat surface it was filled with something. Her house throughout was an imitation international bazaar. There should have been a hawker behind nearly every table trying to sell some cheap trinket or doodad. It was a bric-a-brac overload. I would walk in the door and the twitch would start. The colors clashed in every room. The multiple patterns were dizzying (is only word I can think of to describe) to the point of vertigo and nausea. It was worse than the House of Horrors at the carnival! Seriously I would try anything to not have to go to that house. When Ken and I married she wanted to keep giving me things for our house. "Here dear this will make your house a home." she would say. I just wanted to answer "No, it will make it a side show." I bit my tongue bloody some times.
Thank goodness Ken was in the Marines. I got him to explain to Mama how important it was for us to not have Stuff that would need to be moved at a moments notice and carted around the world. Whew. Luck has been gracious to me many times. I kept in contact with Ken's sisters over the many years since then. MIL passed away not to long back. Her home had not changed much and the Sisters had a few sales to get rid of the STUFF. After all this time some was worth a few dollars (a $3,000.00 at auction tapestry) and some was still just cheap junk but they made enough money from the auction, estate sale and yard sales to pay for the funeral expenses, professionally clean, update and upgrade redecorate and nicely furnish the house (many pieces of Mama's were kept. Her taste wasn't all bad and she did get some very nice quality pieces of furniture. Yeah A LOT of STUFF! They hadn't done the attic or garage the last time I spoke with them, I'll bet there was a fortune in STUFF in both.
Well there is my story of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder As It Pertains To Decorating and I thank you all for the opportunity to relieve myself of such a burdensome memory. Now I may be able to go forth in the world of bazaars again without the nightmares.

CT

I was eating a green apple when I got my first period. So now I hate green or any food that says green apple.

You know, will_work_for_roses, I was wearing hot pink Wrangler jeans and a hot pink and turquoise silk shirt (no joke) when I got my first period...does that explain my extreme dislike for hot pink? :-)

No bad experiences with green for me. Mine come from blue, all blue. Blue shag carpet in the house I grew up in, along with giant gold and blue flowered wallpaper. And now we are renting a house that is wall to wall blue - EVERYWHERE! Blue siding, blue carpet, blue wallpaper, blue painted doors with blue wallpaper border glued ON them. Seriously, who thinks "Oh, I'm going to put this ugly wallpaper on the walls AND the doors!"?

On the upside, we are almost done building our dream house, and I'm fairly certain there will be next to nothing blue on either the walls or floor. :)

My family is southern, but not the Tara/polished silver/classic furniture southern. More like the living in a rented house working hard to keep a roof over their heads southern, on both sides.

So, both my mom and dad felt that new was by definition best. I still hear my dad's voice echoing in my head from when I was a child "Hell, why should I pay good money for somebody else's castoffs?"

Which is why it has taken me till my own mid-century mark to really appreciate antiques.

Ann

My first memories of home decor are of a dear little house all done up in "Early American" style. My mom loved antiques. She had a collection of brilliantly colored decorative bottles in the kitchen windows. Ruffled Priscilla curtains. Braided rugs on hardwood floors. I recall eagles featured in fabric and wall hangings.

Then the 70s hit and we went mod. We moved into a house that had smoked glass mirrors covering the large wall in the sunken living room and light green shag carpeting that we would actually rake to make it stand up before company came over. We played Chicago records loudly on the stereo in that room.

We sold that house and moved into a rental while our next home was under construction. I was 12 and in hog heaven in that horrid rented place. My canopy bed was sent off to storage and I had a mattress on the floor in my upstairs bedroom. (I was thrilled to live in a 2-story house!) I thought it was the absolute coolest, because during the short time we were in that house, mom didn't care whether or not I made my bed daily. So naturally, I never did. It felt like camping out, as the usual somewhat strict household rules were suspended for the duration. The kitchen was rather disgusting, so mom never cooked. We ate junky fast food and, being the 70s and all, we didn't even realize how bad it truly was for us. My best friend lived right across the street, and we were together constantly. Plus, it was summertime, and everything just seemed right with the world. The house itself was pretty darn nasty. The carpeting was so awful that my mom refused to put my baby brother down on it, which is quite possibly why the kid didn't learn to walk on his own until way past the time when most children have mastered that skill.

Ahhhhhhhh ... memories.

This thread is bringing back some memories. My parents' homes were quite...eclectic. We moved a lot (military) and Mom was very frugal yet still had an overwhelming desire for an impressive home. The result was some lovely, good quality furniture in the living & dining rooms along with the ugliest mass produced junk elsewhere. She was also a clean freak, and I spent way too much of my childhood polishing the silver, waxing floors, scrubbing tile, etc. I am far more...relaxed about cleaning. Our home isn't full of clutter and the kitchen/bathrooms are sanitary, but I do not wax the cabinets every Saturday morning.

The house my folks built in the '60s was a long, low slung rancher with high windows and faux Colonial accents. The kitchen had one small window looking out on a covered front porch and the adjoining family room had a SGD to a large screened porch and no other windows. If that didn't make it cave-like enough, the family room had dark wood paneling (that I had to polish monthly.) After a plumbing incident destroyed the beige linoleum floor, Mom had carpet installed throughout the kitchen/casual dining/family room area. It was flat with a wild, sort-of-Moorish pattern in gold, burnt orange and brown. Yikes! The beautiful hardwoods in the rest of the house were covered by room size rugs (like W-T-W but w/ bound edges) in sculptured pile; each room was a different color. When dh & I bought our first home, a tiny post-war bungalow, the first thing we did was to rip up the hideous carpet that the PO's had installed over the lovely hardwoods. We have no carpet in our current home, only a few doormats that are replaced often.

The house I loved belonged to the parents of my best friend when I was a girl. It was so very contemporary, with lots of white leather, bright cushions/pillows, acrylic tables and the latest in techno toys (for its time.) There was a round portable B&W TV that we moved from the breakfast nook (by the white Saarinen table and tulip chairs) to the kids' den where we sat in Hardoy butterfly chairs so that we could watch The Jetsons and pretend about our future in the 1980s. I'd gladly recreate that house today, except for updating the technology and enlarging the master bathroom.

hhireno said "You do realize your own kids will be making fun of all the choices you're placing in your homes today? Sure, we think our choices are the best ever but 20-30 years from now, by what ever technology exists then, your darling kids will be poking gentle fun at you." I don't have to wait. My adult children already poke fun at our current home. We gave dd all of our Ekornes furniture when she bought her first home, along with much of the other contemporary decor that we couldn't use in this house. Sigh. Now the ungrateful wretch (j/k) asks me how I can stand to live with formal H&M furniture and dark hardwoods + ORB hardware vs. the blond maple floors and satin nickel of our former home. Ds cracked up when he saw the *gigantic* artichokes on our kitchen island (which seems as large as some places my dad used to land planes) and really lost it when he saw the antique maps of the "old country" in dh's den. That didn't stop him from enjoying a bourbon and cigar with his father in the den's overstuffed H&M chairs (yes, he's legal age - and I doubt he will try that again.) But what they both laughed at the longest was a life size faux deer head mounted on the wall of the hearth room. I know it's well past its 15 mins. of pop chic, but we do have a lot of deer visit and most folks around here hang the real thing in their homes. Oh well, dh is actually happy that we lived long enough to embarrass our children. ;-)

LOL, the 70's were pretty traumatic, it seems!

When I was growing up in the 80's, my parents had this awful, awful, awful orange and brown wall hanging - fabric stretched on a wood frame. It was huge... in my mind, it seemed like it was 10' tall, but in reality, probably only 3' x 4'. It reminded me of some Tiki tribal thing, like eyes staring down at me. I was sooo embarrased to have my friends see it.

As an adult, I learned that it is a classic Marimekko pattern called (Kaivo). Who knew my parents were so hip?

Welcome YDKM I was so hoping you would come out and play with us. I am guessing you have been the topic at many of dinner tables this week.

Well, I was born in Alabama and we were dirt poor, no running water, no tiolet. What a visual, huh? It was like a third world country back in the 50's at least where I lived way out in the country.

So, we had to relocate up north before we starved to death.
When my mom and dad were able to buy a house it was gorgeous to me and the prettiest one on the street. My parents lived there from 57' to 93'.
My mom bought white carpeting and had all the hardwoods covered in it. A zillion house plants were in front of our big picture window, that was a seventy's thing. We actually had a dishwasher and a garbage disposal even in the early sixty's. Life was good and my mom was quite the little decorator. So really I have no complaints or terrible disorders from my childhood. Of course I was just a baby and I don't remember a thing, thank God, about living in poverty.

Oh sit2900 I remember Melmac too. Is that not the uglyiest crap known to man? lol I see that s--t sold at garage sales even now. eck!

I happen to like the color green, it's the color of money. (lol)

....Jane

Do any of you remember S&H green stamps? That could be a midwestern thing I dunno.

You are such a hoot and I love reading your posts! You're an excellent writer, very creative!

I don't look at my childhood as a decorating nightmare because my parents made a lot of their own decor (which is a concept I adore) and my father in particular was really good at thinking outside of the box. He worked with wood, making beautiful nautical "stuff". I think creatively, he was ahead of his time because there is a lot of stuff on the market now that looks very similar to many of the things he made back in the 70's. He basically turned our little ranch house into a full blown ships quarters, with old barrick beds (which 3 of us 5 girls slept in), a ships wheel & a 200 lb anchor on the lawn! And that is just the beginning! My mother on the other hand sewed (alot). In addition to all of our clothes, she made doilies and all the curtains. Yes, we too had a lot of gingham! To this day, it's one of my favorite prints. I still have the yellow gingham curtains she made for her kitchen. They have white rick rack trim and little ruffles. She hung them in the kitchen window about 40 years ago and then gave them to me when I got my first place. I love them and they have been a fixture in every home I've had. Eventually I'll find the right spot to rehang them somewhere in this home as well.

I don't know why, but for as long as I can remember yellow has always been my favorite color. However, recently Honeydew Green and Blue greens have taken over. No matter what colors I start out with, it seems I always end up with blues, greens and yellows. Happy colors which is why I enjoy them.

Thanks for the great thread, the laugh and the memories. :c) -- Lukki

Remember them?! I had such fun carefully gluing them in after each shopping trip in my Hollywood, California living room (olive green shag and orange cinderblock bookcases in a Mission-style bungalow). I still have some of the cooking utensils and the pinking shears I saved up so industriously for. I gave up sewing, along with ironing, a couple of decades ago, but the shears are still in their nice little box in my Martha Washington sewing table any time I want them.

I'm afraid I'm one of those who's lived to traumatize her children. My son insists on a tasteful uniformity of styles and matching of pieces in his home (I DO blame myself for this), and my daugher is available whenever I'm finally ready for tasteful advice on creating a serenely dignified home. My 60s eclectic doesn't sell any better these days than it apparently did in the 80s.

Newdawn,
Yes, I remember S&H Green Stamps! I bought my DD's crib (1970) with Blue Chip Stamps. It cost 20 books and was white. LOL! The books were gifted to me by various women in the tiny town where I grew up, at my baby shower. DS and I used to put the stamps in the books for our Mom

Sounds like many of you had interesting homes growing up.

In the 60's my mom had a pink Cadillac...kind of a purply pink color. It was so cool. I swear the seats were plastic...cheapo PLASTIC. It's a Cadillac for Christy's sake!!! In the summer when you were wearing shorts, you'd leave a considerable portion of skin from the back of your leg attached to the Cadillac seat when you got up. On the plus side, the many times I spilled my Dairy Queen vanilla shake on the plastic Cadillac seats, the mess wiped right up!

Oh yeah, we had one of those wood paneled station wagons pictured earlier, too. Now that was really cool!

pupwhipped

Oooohhh I remember the stamps! It was a family thing to collect the stamps and pick something out together at the store!!!

Isn't it funny what we remember when it comes to our childhood? I don't know how I ever thought of S&H green stamps.

Pupwhipped I love your pink Cadillac story. How cool to have a pink Cadillac did your mom sell Mary Kay?

What a fun topic.

My childhood decorating PTSD involved my childhood bedroom. When I was 7 for Christmas and my birthday my parents decorated my room for me - basically I got nothing that I wanted - lol. I wanted purple walls, carpet and purple and white gingham bed set for the white canopy bed from Sears. According to my mom - purple was too cool a color for a north facing bedroom in the cold northeast. So what I got was yellow and orange floral wall paper, an orange carpet, orange and white gingham and a canopy stained in a dark brown. I hated it! At 7 I knew it was ridiculous to base one's color choice on what direction the room was facing - how about what the inhabitant of said north facing room likes looking at!!

My parents did make up for it when I was 12 and moved into my sisters old room. THis time I got to decide and I was pretty sophisticated for my age. I picked a gorgeous french floral wallpaper - New England and wallpaper seemed to go together - it was in beautiful mauve tones and I chose a brownish mauve milk paint for the trim. We actually found a carpet that matched the trim and wallpaper perfectly. I spent many wonderful cozy days in that room - even though it also had a ghost - it was a friendly ghost but it was there. My dog who slept on my bed in the old room would not go into this room.I am sure some will think I am certifiable but can a 200+ yo old home really be spirit free?

I hated yellow for a long time as an adult and once had a dusty plum living room. However, now I am sitting in my new great room with pale gold clay walls and an accent wall of warm terra cotta orange clay with pale gold carpet with orange (persimmon) accents. It feels just right now that I am on the opposite coast. Maybe mom was on to something ;-)

Newdawn, yeah you wouldn't think anyone would choose a pink car if they didn't have to, but alas it was not associated with Mary Kay...my mom was a Merle Norman girl all the way. HA! In defense of the pink choice, it really was a lavender type pink...kinda neat.....if it just weren't for those damn plastic seats!

pup

Ugly greeny goldish brownish carpeting and brown formica might scar a person forever....no wait.....that is what is in my house right now!!!! I married DH and his house, and those are the two things he refuses to change. I may have to be treated for PTSD in the future :^)
Great post y'all...thanks for posting UDKM, you have given me a huge smile for the day!!!

WONDERFUL, FUN THREAD! Thank you.

I grew up thinking I was a member of the Russian royal family. Everything was upholstered or gilt-covered. My mom loved anything cushy, fancy and gold, including the swirled mirrored tiles, gold accents, gilt-covered picture frames, frequently re-upholstered curvy furniture from the 1940's (last time reupholstered from turquiose to light blue), long huge thick draperies with some weird pinned on tassels (gold) and a frighteningly- gold-painted curio cabinet containing, yes, gold chachkas of various sorts. (by the way, gilt leads to guilt). Imagine my consternation when I learned that the crown I was wearing as part of my first grade Halloween costume was not real. I still struggle to understand who I am...am I a princess or not? I ask this frequently while I am cleaning the bathroom floor...

Funny funny thread.

OMG everyone is great, nearly cried myself stupid reading your responses. I was forced to endure lemon yellow, avocado green and orange shades..I'm having flash backs, the room is spinning....help!
I remember lemon yellow kitchen swivel chairs with avocado green floors and appliances. Oh and the dishes matched the color scheme with yellow and green flowers. UGH.
Orange and avocado green bathroom. Our toilet was avocado green as was our tub and sink. The wall paper was shades of orange flowers with green accents. I think my parents put it up so me and my brother couldn't spend any length of time in the bathroom without becoming nauseated.
The horror of it all.

marciag, "I grew up thinking I was a member of the Russian royal family." -- LOL!

My mother didn't like strong colors, anything dark, or visual fussy. But she didn't put money into decorating either and wasn't a DIYer. So my memories are of a painfully plain house, somewhat colorless. I remember looking about the rooms and wondering why nothing was pretty or colorful. My room was the dullest ivory with greenish undertones (SW Yarrow), a skimpy gold border was pasted on the top. The woodwork was also skimpy (it was the skinny tie era -- the 60s was the era of thin trim) and was stained too orange. The windows had plastic shades with sheers in pale green or at one time orange. The room faced south and it always seemed 100 degrees in there. Depressing. Cheerless. We weren't allowed to put anything on the walls, nor could we ask for changes.

The only happy thing was that I shared this cell with my sister, who to this day is one of the funniest, wittiest, most creative people I know. And she's an artist with wonderful decorating sense. Fascinating that her color and inventiveness sprang from the dullest of environments. If our room was bland, our imaginations were not.

This is one of the first websites I found when I first got on the internet in the '90s. It is called Avocado Memories. I think I found it while looking for a recipe. LOL.

It is a photo album with autobiographical details that a guy created for his children and grandchildren. It was discovered by others searching the internet, and the guy now has a feedback and comment section. This website was created before there was a such thing as a 'blogger'. The guy has added some things to it over the years but it is pretty much left as is.

It was so named Avocado Memories because the guy had horrible recollections of the decorating in his childhood home.

This is actually a good read. Quaint. Cute.

http://wesclark.com/am/index.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Avacado Memories

My first apartment had a PINK stove, PINK refrigerator and a PINK sink! So I don't want to hear anyone complain about Avocado green or harvest Gold.

There-----------'nuff said!

Oh I can't forget that when we moved to this apartment in Philly I learned all about one of Mother Nature's most resilient creatures- the roach. I discovered that you should always makes lots of stomping noise as you walk into the kitchen and turn the light on before stepping onto the linoleum.

These memories have been buried for 38 years. Thanks for bringing them back to the surface.

The fake wood grain stuff above is great! I mean a frickin toaster!

Here is a link that might be useful: wallcovering

Plastic flowers. Everywhere. In shades that would make Mother Nature faint.

"I don't get why people want their walls GREEN. It casts horrible shadows on faces and makes skin look sallow and sickly."

Hmmm. I once painted my bathroom periwinkle blue. This was the bathroom where I applied my makeup, and the first day that I went to work after I painted the bathroom, someone asked if I was feeling OK. Needless to say, I repainted that next weekend! :)

My current decorating style is schizophrenic....another reason why I read posts here and never contribute pictures, LOL. I attribute that schizophrenic style to my mom, of course. My parents bought a house in 1962 to have more room for baby #5 (me). Since the house was originally built in 1902, something was constantly falling apart, and my father spent EVERY vacation in his life digging a new foundation, replacing wiring, replacing pipes, etc, etc. For my mother's new kitchen, they installed pink formica counters that had gold flecks in them, and linoleum that had a tiny pastel pattern to it. (If you want to see what that looks like, it still is in my mom's house). Conversely, my dad then installed a stainless-steel wall oven, and a cooktop mounted in a huge stainless-steel top finished off by a stainless-steel backsplash. The cabinets are natural cherry with oil-rubbed-bronze handles. 1960's, meet futuristic year 2000 stainless steel/cherry. When I redid my kitchen last year, I finally noticed the clash of the decades in my mom's kitchen. My parents were so poor, though, once something was installed, it never left.

"Our toilet was avocado green as was our tub and sink. "

mine still is...

As a person with PTSD, I definitely appreciate the accuracy of this post's comparison. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes decorating styles that came from the eighties or earlier. Those cringey little details that people hate? I love them. My fondest dream is to someday own an ugly house that was built between the 60s and 70s and looks like it, burnt orange, harvest gold, and all. I often visualize the confused looks on my neighbors' faces when they see a house that looks like the 70s threw up all over it, hear a random mix of big band, classic rock, and nu metal coming through the windows, and realize their neighbors are - GASP! - Millenials! These daydreams are how I cope with living in an apartment full of beige, beige, and more frickin' beige.

That said, even I've got my limits:

• Carpet in the kitchen. My grandmother (God rest her soul) had her kitchen floor covered in some sort of flat indoor-outdoor carpet in geometric patterns of green, gold, and black...or, at least, I remember the shapes being green, gold and black. It was very old carpet, very rarely vacuumed, and always dirty. Sure, that's bad enough, but you know where the trauma came from? Well, Gran grew up in the South during the Great Depression and came from a dirt-poor family. You never got caught wasting anything around her; she even washed and saved disposable straws for future uses. During one visit with her, I was helping her prepare a modest lunch. (Green beans with butter and garlic, a small burger patty on white bread, and white rice with butter and salt. Yes, heart attacks run in the family.) I turned away for a moment, can't recall why, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the butter fall off the knife halfway to the green beans. It landed right on that nasty, ancient, smelly carpet...but you don't waste food. Gran picked it up with her bare hands, looked it over, and brushed something off. Maybe it was gravel, maybe it was a hair, or even a toenail clipping - all were entirely possible in that house. And - AND! - she tossed it right on the green beans and stirred it in like it was completely normal. I suddenly "got a stomach ache" and went home hungry; after my mother heard the story, she started sending money for us to get takeout so Gran didn't poison me. To this day, the idea of carpet in the kitchen makes me want to sit in a corner, rock, and whimper.
• Spherical knobs on cabinets. Like stick a marble on a bolt and it's a knob shape. This one's simpler. When I was in fifth grade, my parents bought a fixer-upper dating back to the twenties. It's a beautiful house but as the kid (read "unpaid manual labor assistant") I got a good close look at all the horrors from the renovation. Over twenty years later, I can still recall the obnoxious shiny round 'clown nose red' knobs on the kitchen cabinets...which, by the way, matched the 60s era strawberries-on-butter-yellow wallpaper...so Bozo nose knobs and butter color on the walls, double-whammy. The horror!
• Wallpaper in general. Sure, I don't mind having paper on the walls, but if there's any possible way, I'm leaving that wallpaper up until I die. I can't stand the wallpaper? I'd almost rather not consider the house. This, too, dates back to that 20s era house. Previous owners, instead of removing the paper and starting over, put layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint on the walls...and it took my parents three rooms of countless layers of painted paper to decide to leave it in place and paint over it. In the half-bath alone, we found about a dozen layers of wallpaper and painted wallpaper dating back to the 20s...and one of those papers had simplistic designs of women in bathtubs, all with beady eyes fixed on the room. I still feel watched anytime I use that bathroom.

Lastly, this one is actually literally a PTSD thing. Buildings without a safe room, basement, windowless interior room, external shelter, or other ideal place to take shelter during a tornado. To simplify a too-complicated explanation, in 2011 the apartment building I lived in was in the direct path of an EF-5 tornado and I was home when it hit. The building had the latest in hyper-paranoid fire safety but it had no posted plan for a tornado in the vicinity. My neighbors and I wound up sheltering in the corner of the hallway just yards from several big glass windows and four all-glass doors.

Needless to say it wasn't pretty, and most of the buildings in that neighborhood were either flattened or nearly so. I won't go into detail beyond this: our building was brick, and there was non-brick construction obliterated for about half a mile in each direction of us. None of my neighbors were injured or killed. We were so far beyond lucky it's dumbfounding.

Ever since then, my first response on entering a new place or checking out a house is "where will we go when s**t hits the fan?" Not if...when. The tornado in 2011 was only the second or third in my city's history; we've had two more smaller tornadic events since 'the big one' and I've lost count of how many "once in a decade/lifetime/generation/millennium" storms have happened since. Missouri isn't known for calm weather, after all. There was such rampant PTSD around here from the tornado (and so many people who ignored the sirens) the city upgraded to new models that test silently. People are finally building safe rooms into most new structures, but it shouldn't have taken that level of destruction.

Put your mark on your place - include all the little details you love and ban those you hate - but for the love of Mike, when you're building, buying, or remodeling, seriously ask yourself where you'll go and what you'll do if your region's form of natural disaster happens, and consider whether or not your plans will keep you and your loved ones safe.

That got heavy. Here are my cats modeling the latest styles in boxes and bags to lighten the mood.

Goldie's sitting in three nested boxes. Those proud cheeks!

Skidd just wanted to remind me that he's the present.