Living Room with Family Culture

A house usually consists of bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room, and each space has a different purpose. In general, the bedrooms are used for sleeping and keeping clothes and belongings; the bathroom is a room for washing and doing the family’s needs; and the kitchen is where the family cooks and eats. Then, what is the living room for?

The living room in the center of the house is used in various ways as a space to receive guests and a place where family members use together. Above all, it is a place where all family members gather. People instinctively want to feel a sense of belonging, and in order to satisfy that desire, they need a space to gather together. The living room plays that role in a house. If a bedroom or a kitchen is used for the family to gather together, it can be a living room.

These days, however, even when the family members gather in the living room, they often spend time in their own different ways, by enjoying their own entertainment on TV, computer, and smartphones. So the time to spend face-to-face decreases.

Take a look at your living room. Isn’t the TV on all day long, and aren’t your family members burying themselves in a smartphone or computer. If so, it means that the living room is not being used properly.

Living Room for TV?

It is no exaggeration to say that the design of all the living rooms of Korean apartments is completely uniform. There is a TV on the wall which is the centerpiece of the living room, and a sofa is placed across it. Builders even install the same-shaped TV stand as a basic option in the living room of all households. Because the sofa and TV always go together like a needle and thread, the sofa is sometimes perceived as just a piece of furniture for watching TV.

It is true that the spread of TV is a landmark event in the modern era and has contributed greatly to bringing the whole family together. As the family life of watching TV together has become common, TV played a role as a medium of communication providing common stories to the family. However, if TV becomes the focal point of conversation between families, the living room becomes a place only to watch TV, and meaningful conversations between family members are cut off. To solve such a problem, more families are drastically removing TVs from their living rooms. Those who have tried the Living Room Without TV and had a positive effect, highly recommend it.

A Korean IT company analyzed a large amount of social data, using the keyword living room for six months between 2014 and 2015. As a result, the first place of the related words to living room + dad was going out. And TV was in the second place. More words such as seated, staying, unapproachable, and afraid were followed. All family heads would like to rest comfortably at home after working all day outside, but it would be a problem if the father’s appearance at home is nothing more than watching TV on the living room sofa.

A living room without a TV is like an empty drawing paper where you can paint a new landscape. Even if you may temporarily feel empty, if you try to create an atmosphere of pleasant conversation with your family instead of watching TV, a much more beautiful picture will be drawn. If the sofa and TV are facing each other, it is good to change the direction of the sofa so that the family can easily have a conversation.

Living Room, a Good Place to Study

When children reach school age, many parents create a separate study room for their children, thinking that it would be good for them to study alone and quietly in an independent space. Sometimes, children have to concentrate and study alone, but if they are lower grade elementary school students, an environment where they can communicate with their parents is more suitable than a private study room.

Usually, children want to show their parents what they have done, such as solving a problem or completing a picture. This is because they want their parents to know how hard they have tried. When the emotional and cognitive exchanges with their parents are well established and they feel comfortable to be cared, the children’s willingness and ability to learn improve. Therefore, if a child is young, the living room is an effective place for his study, where his parents can see him anytime while doing housework and the child can ask his parents for help whenever he needs.

In addition, the parents’ reading books or newspapers, searching something with interest, or calmly focusing on something in the living room can be of great help in developing the children’s learning habits. If the parents don’t read books at all but nag their children, “Go study” or “Can you become someone when you grow up? Why don’t you read books?” the discordance between their words and actions will rouse the children’s antipathy. On the other hand, the atmosphere where the parents study first eliminates the need to tell their children to study. When they frequently see their parents reading books, the children come to like books and resemble their parents’ lifestyles.

It is better to place a computer in the living room than in a child’s room. If a computer is in a child’s room, he is more likely to use it for entertainment than for learning; but if it is in the living room for all family members, it can be used in a safer and more wholesome way. In addition, having a whiteboard in the living room can help children solve problems and increase their interest in learning, and it is also effective for forming a family bond by informing each other of what to do and leaving notes.

Living Room, a Space of Communication & Culture

Living room is a place where family members gather and communicate and where love and happiness bloom, beyond basic activities necessary for living such as eating, clothing, washing, and sleeping. No matter how spacious and well-decorated the living room is, if the family doesn’t become one there, or if it becomes a space where you don’t want to stay because you feel uncomfortable, the living room is just a corridor connecting the entrance and a room.

If you recklessly get rid of the TV and put books and bookshelves in the living room, the warm family atmosphere is not created automatically. What is important is an environment in which the family share warm, sympathetic conversation, and pleasant communication. As much as you value family harmony, you need to look back on what your living room usually looks like and make active efforts to spend quality time with your family.

Contemplating how your family can have a happier time is like drawing the image of the family you want, that is, your ideal family. Not only making plans for retirement or buying a house, but also you need to think, ‘Is my family harmonious?’ and ‘How is my family culture?’ And if you make efforts to fill up what is lacking, your ideal family will be made little by little.

Create a family culture with the things that your whole family can sit around and do together, such as family meeting, performing musical instruments, reading and discussion, teatime, studying, stretching, making things, sound family game, and so on. Family culture refers to the behavior or lifestyle shared by the whole family. When the family members like to be together in the living room through such happy time and when conversation and laughter do not cease, we can say that your living room is functioning properly. Such a living room is a shortcut to an ideal family.

In order to establish a healthy family culture, all family members need to carefully listen to each other and take others’ words into consideration rather than pointing out and evaluating others’ mistakes or faults. Never raise your voice in the living room. If you need to discipline your children or if you have any conflict with your spouse, resolve it in another room so that the living room can always become a place of peace.

The living room is a common space where family culture is formed, so every member should take care of it. If the living room is dirty, you will not want to stay. So all the members should make effort to keep it clean, without decorating it to one person’s tastes or letting one person use it all alone.

When the living room functions properly, other rooms too come to life. The positive energy of family love flows from the living room, where communication, culture, love, and dreams coexist, and it fills each room. Then the house becomes a warm and safe nest of love, and the family members who constantly receive that energy come to life.