Is this what 99% of mumsnetters homes look like

[Damaged27]

After all these interior design threads this is what I'm imagining everyone on mumsnets homes look like. Just curious if I'm way off because iv never been in a home like this. Maybe if the person is in their 80s. Do people really have bookshelves?

100% this. Well said 👏

All this. And we have many, many books and even a small library (wall to wall built in book cases). Books are also a thing of beauty in themselves, I have a few that are collectors items because of their stunning covers, illustrations inside and their gold tipped pages. We have squishy sofas, lamps everywhere, two reading nooks, lots of art where there are no books and lots of colour! I love my house, and when I look at my books, favourite phrases and passages come to mind, so it is like they are all whispering to me. They are old friends, some have survived many, many culls! I am never bored, I love being at home and like @SadCelticBunny , my home is full of memories and lots of (to me) beauty. I just cannot do minalism. It does take me ages to clean but that is the price I pay.

Hey I got things like Girl Defined's book on sex. That had its amusing moments, like when, as a teenager, Kirsten confessed to her parents that she was struggling with the sin of masturbation. 😁 That's one of many convos most of us never had with our parents.

Your asking the wrong person. I wouldn't want to read it the first time let alone re read it

Dodged a bullet there.

Yes have bookshelves with books on. Not a whole room full but just a few shelves!

I think the thing with the mismatched furniture is that I was brought up to keep furniture for a long time (not replaced often) and then when you do buy, buy that one thing you love, so one chair, or a table. It's quite hard for me to buy matching things, beyond say a set of dining chairs. We tried matching plates in our house, but they got broken and it was all very stressful when it turned out we couldn't get replacements, so we are going back to the eclectic mishmash approach.

Yup bookshelves but also covered in DD’s toys and mainly her books on the shelves (I moved abroad and switched to kindle books years ago). I read fiction and non-fiction but I rarely go back to a books these days.

Some of us are academics. We don’t hoard books, we use them.

Mine are coming home when I retire - 20 shelves of them.

I went on a date, all went well, arranged a second then 2 hours later he texted me to call it off because I used "long words" and his mates said clever women are a pain

My ex HATED the fact I'm an avid reader.
It's one of the reasons he's an ex.

Love me, love my books!

Thinking about what you said, OP, that you associate homes like the ones you pictured with over 80s as they have had time to collect a lot of stuff - I HAVE got an awful lot of stuff but I am a collector. My DH always jokes that if I was marooned on a desert island I would be on the beach collecting shells, instead of building a fire and shelter! Collectors are people with a certain mind set and books are one of the easiest things to collect. Even if you are not normally a reader, you would start picking up books about what you are interested in. I don't just read, I have a book collection that I love, so perhaps that is the difference? People who collect (anything) versus people who don't?

Some of us are academics. We don’t hoard books, we use them.

Yep, even my office is wall to wall books!

Some of our house looks like that - but the ceilings are two shelves lower and all those books are generally piled on the floor.....

@Damaged27 I think that bookcases filled with books (whether they are posh ones like the pictures in your OP or the 7m of Ikea billy book cases I have in the loft ‘study’) is really personal.

I loved books from a small child because, well, my mum was a toxic cow and family life was so very hard (DV etc) they gave me a place to escape to. I’d skive off school for weeks and hide in the library to just read. They inspired me to want to go to university (where I did Eng Lit): this was partly about my love of books but mainly about wanting more than the life my mum had and resented every second of her life.

Not everyone has that sort of relationship with books and certainly my kids would much rather game and watch YouTube than read a book. Even in my fifties I struggle to put a book down at midnight if I only have 10-15% left to read.

If I win an Omaze property or the lottery I am definitely going to have a huge room with floor to ceiling bookcases and comfy sofas - ideally ground floor, opening onto a glorious garden so my dogs can wander in and out. [Fantasy alert.] I have thousands of physical books, but DH prefers them in the attic room and not cluttering the downstairs which is fair enough, I suppose, as I banned his mega DVD/CD selection to the loft too 🤣

But I also have over a 1000 books on my kindle.

@Damaged27
I have never once said that. I said the only people I know who have homes that look like this which is cluttered in my opinion is people in their 80s as they have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. This was not just about bookcases it was also about mismatched furniture and just stuff everywhere

Still judgy though. "Cluttered" and "mismatched" imply the reverse is preferable. One person's clutter is another's lifetime of memories. "Mismatch" is often a choice. I would no sooner have matching furniture, bar dining chairs, than I'd poke my eyes out. Also not age-related in the slightest in my experience.

Iv never been called snobby before. Does this mean I'm now upper class 🤔 Thanks I think 😁

We have no bookcases. There are 2 large boxes for kids books, and 2-4 grown up books in the house at any one time.

I take a book from library or buy one, and pass on after reading. I won‘t read the same book twice, therefore I don’t see a point of having marvelous bookshelves just to impress some random visitors.

I don't like bookshelves, I've banned them since my exh used to love them, ended up with far too many dusty books, it feels cluttered, I'd rather keep a few books away in a drawer than on shelves.

Books - shelved, in growing piles on the floor, often reread. The reward of reading vs the tedium of dusting, tho I might make a vague effort come spring.

Each to their own.

Jesus Christ, op. It’s becoming quite obvious that you rarely open a book, to be honest 😬

I didn't say the reverse was preferable I said its what I prefer which is actually the opposite of what most on here prefer. Which I'm ok with as it's my home. Are you OK with that

How old are you OP? I wonder if younger people who grew up with kindles and audiobooks naturally have less books.

We have 3 adult book shelves and 3 child ones but the vast majority of the adult books were purchased 15+ years ago. We still occasionally buy some non fiction books but I listen to all my fiction on audible now.

I would say though that I tend to forget books a bit more easily on kindle and I do miss my books sometimes (we put shelving up wall to wall in our last place) and have odd flights of fancy about lots of shelving but the minimalist in me quite likes not having loads of clutter anymore. Well I didn’t until I had a child and it all went to shit again. But yeah Dd’s bookshelves are crammed and we are going to have a clear out because they are piled around the apartment now.

I think it is really lovely being surrounded by books, it’s just not practical for me anymore. I still buy physical books of I’m browsing but it does get to the point where they have to be donated as I start running out of space.

My Dh is very clever and he doesn’t read apart from the newspaper (lack of time more than anything else, works very long hours) so I do think some of the responses are a bit snobby.

I know I have said this from the start. Keep up