Chuck out your Chintz

[kraysee]

For some reason I was thinking about the IKEA campaign in the late nineties that encouraged everyone to chuck out their chintz.

I remember my home in the late eighties and early nineties being a mix of Laura Ashley prints, striped wallpapers, elaborate swagged curtains and regency style furniture. Then suddenly we were all encouraged to go to IKEA (which was a new concept to me), to buy brightly coloured modern stuff. And my friends and I did exactly that.

Does anyone else remember this?

@MrsMoastyToasty I worked in a cafe in the 90s and all the China was that pattern!

I remember Chuck Out Your Chintz. I didn't do it though. I like chintz and patterns and flowers. My house is like a 1980s junk shop.

IKEA is what it is cheap mass produced furniture that is unlikely to be passed down generations but it serves a purpose. I have Ercol dining chairs and a table from the 1960’s that DH grew up round, his Mum downsized so we were very happy to have them. To buy new each chair is £500 and the table would be 1.8k. We also have some of his Grandmother's furniture, the great grandmothers got sold as far too large from a country house.

Alan Clark made a comment famous at the time about Heseltine having to buy his own furniture. Furniture inherited is very much a sign of generational wealth passed down. This is DH family and most certainly not my very humble beginnings. So there can be some snobbery regarding new furniture.

My parents decorated the bathroom c. 1990 with Laura Ashley striped wallpaper and towels. Naturally they also put the coordinating wallpaper border and painted the floorboards sage green, can't have 90s decor without sage or hunter green. LA extended to duvets, sheets, more wallpaper and clothing. Thinking back it was really good quality, classic stuff.

There was the "90s minimalism" revolution in fashion at some point, although Ikea didn't arrive (we weren't in the UK) until well after 2000. Sometimes I think things are quite boring now, everyone wears navy, light blue, white trainers, and bathroom and kitchen tiles are grey, beige or white with no exceptions allowed !!

I was a teen at the time and the advert really upset me as our family home was chintzy but in a really lovely way and I didn't want it to change. Every thing was pale pink, cream and china blue and it was really welcoming, tailor made curtains with swaggy pelmets, pretty patterned carpets.

Now that same home is all grey and white, pale wood floors, kallaxes galore, white blinds, and quite soul-less and clinical.

I've got kallaxes with quite chintzy inserts so best of both worlds I guess.

I chuckle to myself when I see chintz in ikea still now.

Loved that advert.

I completely disagree about IKEA furniture being “virtually indestructible”.

I bought my dd an Ikea white bedroom suite because she wanted the same as her best friend. It was nice and functioned well but after about six years the white melamine or whatever it is started turning a yellowy colour and the trim started coming off some of the drawers at the bottom and one of the wardrobe doors started drooping.

We soldiered on with it but it all went to landfill when dd went to uni and I hate to think of what the chemicals in it are doing to the environment.

Yet I have really old wooden furniture; wardrobes, tables, corner cupboards and chests of drawers that came from my grandparents, and probably their parents before that - nothing fancy but good and dolid - and they are still in really, really good condition.

Well, you’re not going to see the cheap tat made in the 1900s, are you? It will have been thrown out long ago! Anything you are seeing now is survivor bias.

And the Make a fresh start one in the Very early 2000 S with the Ali G like guy rapping over walk away (Cast). Actually sounded good 😊

That's the bit I didn't like. The waste.

For anyone who wants to revel in nostalgia:

I have my parents' dining furniture, it's 1960s Ercol but I don't think it makes me upper class. It was something special when my parents saved up for it though.

. Duplicate

I think I remember a “Chuck out that chintz
today” jingle

It wasn't just IKEA though, they started a design revolution that moved us as a country away from one aesthetic and towards a new one. Within a couple of years everywhere was doing plain colours and no flowery stuff anywhere.

Recently chintz has come back though and I think it looks nice again now. It had got a bit out of control though, it was like people were trying to put dresses on everything. No one needed a flowery curtain under their sink hiding their toilet rolls, or an extra curtain above their curtains to hide the fact their curtains were on a rail.

It’s amazing how much the catalogue changes in 4 years! You can see them all at the IKEA museum https://ikeamuseum.com/en/explore/ikea-catalogue/

I think you need to remember previous generations treasured their belongings and furniture was passed between generations.

This was the start of the disposable fast everything

I remembered 'chuck out the chintz' looking at a recent S&B thread featuring flowery blouses.

We never bought the chintz in the first place when we bought our starter home in 1986. It's some of the colours we still have from that period that I like which are hard to match or replace - apricot/peachy tones for instance.

It was Frank Skinner. I wish I could find it on YouTube! It contains the immortal line, “That’s why me and my mate are dumping this primate” 😆😆

Justin Hawkins of The Darkness fame wrote a lot of IKEA jingles before he hit it big. I don’t know if “Chuck Out Your Chintz” was his. He definitely did the “schlomping” one.

I remember having a boyfriend who was quite successful in his field, whilst I was still at college, and a single parent to a five year old. We went out for dinner with some of his friends, who were talking about how glad they were when they’d been able to replace their IKEA furniture, once they’d established their household. I just remember thinking that I’d have loved the opportunity to furnish my house from IKEA, instead of all of the velour, tasselled stuff I’d inherited from relatives!

IKEA was revolutionary in the 90s though. It was the combination of 4 factors

• cheap
• Iconic/scandi design
• good quality
• immediately available

Competitors had 2, or at most 3, out of those 4.

MFI was cheap, and immediately availability, but terrible quality. (And IKEA were even cheaper).

Ercol etc were iconic and good quality, but not cheap or immediately available.

etc

Add on to that the fact that some pieces were real enduring design classics.

I do think that both the quality of the product, and the design innovation have gone downhill In the last 10 years though. I think that IKEA now is on a par with MFI in the 90s.

We had some handmade furniture. But could never have afforded ercol, we had mfi and then ikea. Habitat was too expensive for us.
ikea meant people could have matching and affordable furniture. It’s not as cheap as it was but the quality is reasonable.

Glad other people remember this! I went from a pine dresser and table in my kitchen to white melamine table and chairs and painted the walls lime green. It was my first introduction to candles too

I remember the ad, and I remember my friends having the wallpaper with the border and pelmits on their curtains etc. But my mum was ahead of the times in the 80s - our house was black, white and grey, with a bit of navy thrown in! Her pride and joy was a very expensive (for the time) black habitat sofa, not a bit of chintz in sight! I did buy the popular ikea pink floral bedding set and curtains though when I was a teen!

I like IKEA for all the jars and boxes and space saving ideas.....but the shop itself is like the Black Hole of The Bermuda Triangle..
I might see something I like in the 'display ' ...but can never find it to buy it.
And there's no wondering around aimlessly..it's follow the crowd..
Now if course it may have changed since 6 years ago when I got stuck in the one in Leicester and couldn't find my way out for ages.