WILL OUR SENSE OF STYLE AGE BETTER THAN THESE EXAMPLES?

Do You Remember These 10 Long-Gone Home-Decor Nightmares?

Image: FOTEROS

Judging the past in hindsight might be a bit unfair but, sometimes, it can be fun. If you’ve ever guessed the age of a photograph or a movie by the furniture and decor showcased in it, then you might know what we are talking about.

Each decade has its own fads and passing styles of home decor. And while some of these aesthetic statements might seem tasteful even today, many documented instances did not age so well. The following list offers some of these unfortunate examples for your perusal and, let’s be honest, amusement.

Image: Tincho Franco

Having your walls feel as soft and warm as your thick floor carpet might seem like a good idea for about a second. But any person with a minimum sense of practicality will understand the issues that would come with such a decision.

In the 1970s, however, carpet was just about everywhere. When people ran out of floor space to carpet, they started putting it on the walls. The aim was to create a comforting, homey feel, but as people everywhere discovered, it was a nightmare to clean. It was disastrous to vacuum as the wool fibers would get stuck inside the cleaners.

Image: Blake Woolwine

Sleeping on water, lulled by the rolling waves beneath you, in your own bedroom, was a thing. Never mind the fact that water beds weighed over a thousand pounds on average, and filling them up included bringing in a hose from the backyard. Or the nightmare that ensued if they spring a leak. For some reason, people liked them.

Fortunately, these days, sleeping atop a rubber sack filled with H20 has gone the way of pet rocks, platform shoes, and TV antennas.

Image: Michael Pepper

Carpeting everything seems to be the '60s motto. And yes, this included bathrooms. Toilet lids, seats, those mini rugs that hugged the base of the toilet, you name it, it was all covered in spectacularly unhygienic, germ-catching rugs.

Yes, it can be comfy and not as cold as tile or linoleum on bare feet. But that is not enough reason to transform your bathroom into a sanitary trap, a hub for mold, mildew, and toxic spores.

Image: Thought Catalog

Bathroom sinks, toilets, bidets, and bathtubs are usually bought and installed together in a home. And, for some obscure aesthetic reason, back in the ’70s, avocado was a very popular color choice for these elements.

Maybe it had something to do with Art Nouveau and the whole "back to nature" thing of the early 20th century? We don’t really know. But luckily, this also has gone the way of the Dodo.

Image: Denis Agato

Dripping walls and rugged ceilings, as if you were living in a grotto, were wildly popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And the complicated process of removing such ghastly features has made them survive to these days in many places.

To be fair, these types of ceilings were said to offer better acoustics and sound absorption, but dust and dirt cling to the rough and uneven surface, making it a nightmare to clean.

Image: Tim Mossholder

Curtain-matching window valances were all the rage back in the day. Heavy drapery and darker ambiances were very much appreciated until the ‘90s but not so much today, when light is paramount.

The ‘70s and ‘80s family sitcoms that revolved around a central living room or kitchen where most of the events took place were swarmed with these types of fabric. Lucky for us, not anymore.

Image: Jonas Schöne

Glass bricks were once a ubiquitous feature in not just banks and modern dentist waiting rooms but, for some reason, also in family homes. The excuse was allowing light in without losing privacy but, really?

Whether in the form of windows or shower screens, these glass blocks were used as room separators in the 1980s and '90s. Since then, we've found more efficient ways to keep spaces light.

Image: Toni Cuenca

Having inflatable furniture in your home is akin to using patio furniture in your living room. But worse, since patio furniture will not explode if met with a needle. If you remember those neon inflatable chairs and sofas teenagers loved in the ‘90s, you know what we are talking about.

The noise, the heat, the color, the smell, the shape. Just about everything about this seemingly practical solution to home decor was truly horrible.

Image: Afrimod Studio

Wicker furniture was a popular choice among people who thought it would be great to live every day as if in a holiday resort. It was a staple of groovy 1970s interior design, usually accompanied by beaded curtains, wall-to-wall carpeting, and plenty of macrame.

Downsides? It breaks easily, it creates debris as it loses its fibers, it makes a screechy noise, and, let's face it, it looks like something out of a Stephen King novel.

Image: @felipepelaquim

Never mind the nightmare of looking for round sheets. There is a reason why beds are square, and it has to do with the human body shape. Whoever invented round beds must have slept alone for his or her entire existence since having to share one of these contraptions with somebody else is nothing short of, again, a nightmare.

Lucky for us, round beds are long gone, at least in most of the civilized world.

Real meanings for unreal beings

What does "wendigo" really mean? 12 mythical creatures’ names explained

Monsters, ghosts, and strange beasts have haunted stories for a very long time, but their names can be just as mysterious as the creatures themselves. Some are surprisingly literal, while others have traveled across languages, religions, and continents before reaching English. From a "knocking spirit" to a goblin hiding in the periodic table, here’s what the names of 12 famous mythical creatures really mean.

The word zombie has traveled almost as dramatically as the creature itself. English acquired it through Caribbean forms such as Haitian Creole zonbi, with deeper roots in African languages. Merriam-Webster compares it with Kimbundu nzúmbe, meaning "ghost."

The traditional Haitian concept also differs significantly from Hollywood's hordes of contagious undead. Zombies became associated with people supernaturally deprived of autonomy and restored to a form of life. The modern flesh-eating version is largely a product of later popular culture, which transformed both the creature and the image English speakers associate with its name.

The word wendigo comes from a family of related Algonquian words, including Ojibwe wiindigoo and Cree wīhtikōw. The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary describes wiindigoo as a winter cannibal monster associated with terrifying, insatiable hunger.

But its literal origin is surprisingly uncertain. The mysterious-sounding word fuels the image of a night monster from past times.

A banshee's famous cry sounds frightening enough, but her Irish name is much less sinister. Banshee comes from bean sí: bean means "woman," while sí refers to the supernatural beings traditionally associated with Ireland's ancient mounds.

That makes the name something like "woman of the fairy mound." And contrary to many movie versions, a banshee traditionally doesn't scream someone to death. Her mournful keening warns that a death is approaching, making her more of a supernatural messenger than an attacker.

Sometimes a monster's name tells you exactly what you're getting. Werewolf comes from Old English werwulf, combining wer, meaning "man," with wulf, meaning "wolf." In other words, the fearsome name basically means "man-wolf."

The interesting part is that wer was once an ordinary word for a male person before disappearing from everyday English. Meanwhile, the alternative lycanthrope reaches almost the same destination through Greek: lykos means "wolf," and anthrōpos means "human being."

Today, finding your doppelgänger might mean spotting somebody who looks uncannily like you. The German word is wonderfully straightforward: doppel means "double," while Gänger means "goer." English speakers began using doppelgänger during the 19th century.

Originally, however, this wasn't merely a word for two strangers who could pass for siblings. A doppelgänger could be an eerie supernatural counterpart of a living person. Over time, the ghostly implications faded, leaving us with a convenient, and much less alarming, word for a look-alike.

If a ghost spends the night knocking things around, German already has the perfect name for it. Poltergeist combines a verb meaning "to knock" or "make a racket" with Geist, meaning "spirit." Literally, it's essentially a "knocking spirit."

That explains why poltergeists differ from the stereotypical silent apparition floating down a hallway. Their calling card is physical commotion: bangs, mysterious noises, and moving objects.

Long before the golem became a legendary creature, its name appeared in the Hebrew Bible. In Psalm 139, the Hebrew golem refers to something unformed or unfinished, an intriguing origin for a being traditionally fashioned from lifeless material.

Jewish folklore eventually transformed the idea into an artificial humanlike figure, commonly created from clay and animated through sacred knowledge.

Here's a surprisingly gentle name for a decidedly ungentle monster. Chimera comes ultimately from Greek chimaira, meaning "she-goat." Yet the mythological Chimera was no ordinary farm animal: ancient accounts combined parts of a lion, goat, and serpent into one fire-breathing beast.

The hero Bellerophon eventually defeated it while riding Pegasus. Its bizarre mixture of incompatible parts proved linguistically durable. A chimera later came to mean an impossible fantasy, while modern biology uses the same word for an organism containing genetically distinct populations of cells.

The Minotaur's name is practically a miniature plot summary. Greek Minōtauros combines the name Minos with tauros, meaning "bull." The famous monster is therefore, quite literally, the "bull of Minos."

According to Greek mythology, King Minos had the creature confined inside the Labyrinth designed by Daedalus on Crete. Theseus eventually killed the Minotaur and found his way back with Ariadne's help.

Break apart hippogriff, and half the creature immediately appears. Its first element ultimately comes from Greek hippos, meaning "horse," joined to griffin.

Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto featured the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso, first published in 1516. He imagined the flying animal as the impossible offspring of a mare and a griffin. Modern fantasy fans may know the creature from Harry Potter, but hippogriffs had already been around for roughly five centuries.

Kobolds were mischievous spirits in German folklore, appearing around homes or underground. Another remarkable oddity is the fact that one of these creatures managed to sneak onto the periodic table.

The element cobalt takes its name from kobold. German miners used the term "supernatural" for troublesome ores that failed to produce the metals they expected and could contain dangerous arsenic compounds. In the 18th century, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt established cobalt as a distinct element.

The Kraken came into English from Scandinavian tradition, where stories described an enormous sea creature lurking beneath northern waters. English records the word by the mid-18th century, when European writers were spreading accounts of the supposedly gigantic beast.

Its name contains a neat grammatical surprise. Scandinavian kraken is related to krake, with the final -n functioning as a definite article, essentially "the krake." Later encounters with real giant squid offered a tantalizing possible explanation for some old sea-monster stories.