No. Life is short and I no longer worry about much...

I have to agree with children jumping on furniture.

This isn't quite the same thing, but someone I know someone who has a sign on her bathroom wall over the toilet..."Gentlemen, please refrain from standing." She'll also voice her request to male guests. Very weird but then she also runs her vacuum cleaner over her dicondra lawn. And yes...your shoes come off at her front door.

My walls! (it is not just children who run their hands on walls! ) And just because you are allowed to wander your house with food, does not mean that you are allowed to here so the hands on the walls becomes worse!

I’m probably in the minority, however, I don’t like dinner guests cleaning up in the my kitchen after dinner. I prefer to do it myself after all the guests are gone. I have my own way of doing things & I know where to put everything. I had one friend break a $200 item ( she replaced it, but I really didn’t want her to , it was an accident )) in her haste. My kitchen is off limits after dinner.

Why would your guests even THINK of going into your master bedroom, unless it's a party and it's where they are laying their coats (a custom probably out of use now).

I also do not like dinner guests cleaning up after dinner either, and I especially do not like it when they put my Waterford crystal in the sink where it can easily be knocked over and broken. As soon as someone does that, they are never given crystal drinking glasses again. My grandmother was compulsive about helping to clear dishes after dining, and when visiting her niece, my grandmother broke an heirloom piece of china that had been brought over from Germany by their relatives. When I once broke a porcelain tea cup/demitasse when I was five at my grandmother's house, I was made to feel terrible for months. After my grandmother died, my sister sold all of my grandmother's porcelain at an estate sale.

As I get older, I have less tolerance for difficult people - and I've come to know many. Just don't touch my doorbell...

This reminds me of the "shoes on or off" discussion.

I don't think these posts are necessarily a good thing. Nor does it have much to do with decorating.

I have Waterford. I would never think to "punish" someone if they broke one....If a person is more worried about their "stuff" than their guests, then the priorities are wrong...Just lock your stuff away and use them for your own enjoyment.

What's wrong with a purse on the table?

There are many articles on purses and the germs they carry.

I also think it is wrong to punish someone for breaking something, especially the way I was punished as a small child, but I also think that if someone does not treat something with respect, then there is no reason to offer that for their use, as there are other options that may be more appropriate and may also make the guest feel more comfortable. I do hide my crystal from certain guests and use it mainly for my own enjoyment, but I do share it with those who truly appreciate and respect it. Just because I have something does not mean that I have to share it randomly - I am selective with regards to that. I do not treat everyone the same because people are different. Some people will prefer or choose to drink out of plastic glasses.

This thread relates to decorating as it brings up the issue of childproofing (or guest-proofing) your home, and this affects decorating options.

I don't like people to go into our master bedroom. It's just a personal and private place. I once found my husband's college buddy and his wife napping on our bed when I went upstairs to the guest suite tell them dinner was ready to be served, but they were in our room instead. They said it was because it had a TV. Creeped me out. Just weird.

"What do you not want guests touching in your home?" is NOT the same as asking if you decorate around guests and how do you do it?

It's a question that's made up to encourage discussion, imho. Much like the one about asking guests to take their shoes off.

Have a great Thanksgiving, and enjoy your guests...

@K Laurence...I completely agree with the kitchen thing! ;-)

I just want them to take their shoes off.

I've never had a problem with adult visitors. Children are disconcerting because most haven't been taught to "enjoy with your eyes and ears, not your hands." The cats know to hide when a short human enters the house.

In a previous home the door from the hall to my bedroom was right by the nightstand. A guest commented about the book on the nightstand. It was entirely reasonable for the guest to be in the hall. It never bothered me if people put coats on my bed, etc. I was nice, but internally my reaction was way out of proportion. For some reason commenting about something I was reading in bed felt very invasive. It wasn't because of the content of the book, which was something ordinary. Discussing my books would normally be welcome because I have enough of them in public rooms to open a library. Weird.

Touching things and cleaning up in the kitchen after dinner are two completely different things. I too like doing my own clean up but while I’m doing that my guests can touch whatever they want.

I’m sure the reason these kind of foolish questions are posted by Houzz is to drive more traffic to the site and justify higher ad rates. Never used to have these goofy questions posted on the d garden web forums.

I live alone with my cats in a small house. I like doors open and windows uncovered. In fact, I have those wedge door stops for every interior door because one of my cats is a door closer and will shut himself in a room if I don't. So, when people come over all the doors are open. If someone uses the guest bathroom, they pass my bedroom and can look in. I've never had anyone comment on anything about my bedroom. If I found someone lying on my bed with the TV on I would be beyond shocked.

If the guest bath were occupied and someone else had an urgent need, they'd be invited to use my little master bath within my bedroom ("en suite" is just too pretentious for that crowd).

I guess the reason the question bothers me is that it's coming from Houzz, not from a garden-variety (get it?) GWer.

Not something I even considered, but once a guest opened the birdcage door while I was not in the room. What he hadn't realized was that my pet would want to fly over and land on his balding head. Evidently, the little nails do scratch. He got what he deserved, I thought.

Bpathhome, I hadn't noticed who posted the question. But, you're right, it's not from a garden-variety GWer.

I asked to use the bathroom of a customer and was told to go down to the condo community bathroom. If this hadn't been the customer of my customer, I would have packed up and left, taking my inferior dirty a$$ with me.

@Joseph - I admit, master bathroom/bedroom is off limits - but it's off limits to everyone but me and the better half. Whether you're a guest or a contractor/handyman/tradie, you're welcome to use the guest bathroom but you don't come into my personal space. I hope that's a reasonable compromise.

I don't really have any rules in my house. My Mom was and is an immaculate housekeeper but she let us make a mess when it was time to play and she put it back together when play time or family dinner was over. If you spilled something, it got cleaned up. I try to live by that code.

I never had kids but I was a kid and I don't get "Brad-style parents" (it's not actually about Brad or his behavior), it's about Mom and Dad. I'm over 50 and when my Mom says Joseph .... to this day, I stand up and say, "yes ma'am"! She wasn't that strict but she didn't let what shouldn't slide, ever slide.. I see it in friends, they want to be their kids' friend but they're not their friend, they're their parents.

God, I sound 100. LOL

More than 15 years ago and when I still lived with my parents, there was a kid under 5 who decided to open my bedroom door and was proceeding to try and grab my cat by the tail from under the bed, after hearing adults talking about my having a cat...that whole situation made me livid, but I went nuclear when the parents of this kid got mad at me for telling their ‘precious angel’ that cats don’t like people pulling at their tail which is why mine scratched the kid, and that they are not allowed in my room - then I marched them down the hall back to the parents (Kid crying, I was not moved. But then, if someone had kept an eye on their progeny and stopped them from opening closed bedroom doors we wouldn’t have been dealing with the situation we found ourselves in.).

So...no tail pulling, no allowing child wandering, no problems.

Kids exploring the house is about the most brutal breach of trust you can have. We invited some new friends with their kids. Their kids ended up making tents of our bedding in the quest room upstairs. Broke the porcelain doll too. The parents knew that, but 'forgot' to apologize or pay for the broken doll.

Did I mention this friendship didn't last?

Another thing just entered my mind. I once visited the house of a friend of my youth and she proudly showed me the whole place. Including the bedroom. Which was full of pornographic pictures. Big ones. Full of them. Inescapable.

I could have missed that... How do you clean your memories? We lost contact after that. We didn't seem to have too much in common whilst grown-up.

The purpose of the question is not to validate a behavior but just to share. I do not care if anyone likes the way I live, it's my home. I don't care what you do in yours, but it's interesting to read about.

I dunno, my guests (except for close friends and family members) are generally restricted to the first floor of the house. Not so much by physical barrier, but rather, that is where the action is. Other than that, please:

• Open my books- I'd love to help you find a new cookbook or talk about them
• Find drinks and food from the fridge
• Browse the wine cellar--I'll gladly open something if you want to try it
• Wear your shoes on the first floor, or take them off, doesn't matter to me.
• Sit on the furniture, re-arrange the throw pillows to your liking
• Ask me about my kitchen knives-- I'll let you try them out if you want
• Entertain my dog if you want-- he's people-oriented, extremely tolerant, and will wander off to the laundry room (his spot) when he's had enough

I hate people messing with things in the kitchen but it's kind of inhospitable to declare the entire room mine (I don't even like family rearranging stuff) so I just deal with it. If someone wants to help clean up or something, I only let them put away obvious stuff, though. I have them leave anything that doesn't go in the cutlery drawer or the dish cabinet on a clean dish towel on the counter and put it away myself. Just makes me too nutty to find things in odd places because someone didn't ask where something went.

Other than that, the biggest things are the dog and my SO's workshop, I think. The dog is friendly, but any dog can get overwhelmed so the rule is if the dog takes himself away from the action (to his crate or to an out of the way room) then you leave him alone. He's communicating his feelings, so you have to respect him, he isn't a toy.

My SO does electronics stuff as a hobby/contracting on the side, so he's got all kinds of odds and ends, some of them quite sensitive. We intentionally put his workshop in a room not on the main floor with a good solid door so it could be shut away when people are visiting.

I suppose also that if my mom is staying with us, the downstairs bathroom she uses becomes off-limits to anyone who isn't immediate family, and even we are banned if we are sick. That's because she's got cancer so we try to minimize risk of spreading germs too much - handles and surfaces that people touch a lot are prime for germ distribution.

I agree this thread is an interesting read, as are some of the others initiated by Emily to encourage sharing. While it's not a typical GWer question, for better or worse we're no longer being hosted by GW. Participating or ignoring these types of discussions seems a small price to pay for being hosted by Houzz.

I raised seven children. They had many friends. I am generous, with my time and my spaces. We had a very very busy house for many years. We also had the best parties. Ever. Our home was always open. We never locked the front door. And I loved all of that.

I now I live alone. I have my pup but no humans. My granddaughter visited last weekend with her mama, my oldest child. She is two. And the most gorgeous fabulous child. She jumped on everything. She hugged the pup. She ran and jumped on me. I think my ease made my daughter more comfortable and my granddaughter very relaxed. It was a fabulous weekend.

and I miss all of that. Enjoy your family, your guests, your visitors. Giving thanks tonight.

eastautumn: Participating or ignoring these types of discussions seems a small price to pay for being hosted by Houzz.

Hear, hear. Emily's just doing her job and we can participate, or scroll on by.

I really didn't cotton to whomever it was at a party about 20 years ago who touched my pain meds, and walked off with about half of them. (I didn't have a "private" bathroom.)

Chickadee, you prefer books to be kept private? I have no idea how many wonderful conversations and new, burgeoning friendships have developed for me over the years because two of us have bonded over a book. Either in my house, or theirs. I can't help but feel sorrow for you.

I have a glass statue- an award that was made especially for me and I don't like people touching that or my plants. I had a guest knock over a plant while running their hands over it's leaves. I also don't like people feeding the goldfish because they tend to give him/her too much food or grabbing my dogs by their faces because that's just an invitation to be bit. But other than that I am kind of "meh" over the rest of my house. Things can either be cleaned or replaced.

These are the only things I dont want guests touching...I cant guarantee that they wont get bitten!

Rockybird- those are beautiful birds and thanks for the pictures. I love birds so much but DH is deathly afraid of them. I so enjoy looking at pictures of pet birds and yours are gorgeous.

Blue Online - thank you!!!! They are a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. If you ever get one, try to get a rescue or rehomed bird. The last bird pictured I found on craigslist with a broken wing living in a tiny cage. I believe she was abused, but with me she is the sweetest. I also have one more tiny parrot, who I found severely malnourished, missing most of his feathers. His name is Finn, after midcentury designer Finn Juhl, and he is so sweet!

I dont want them touching their phone or Ipad. Nothing is more rude than to come visit and to hang out on their phone or IPad.

This belongs on the conversations side.

Only our friends are invited into our home. We have a lot of friends, but they're all good, thoughtful people. As such, there's nothing that would be off limits to them, because they would never overstep in the first place.

@bellburgmaggie What, if anything, do you do to prevent people from using their phones or ipads? I agree that it is incredibly rude, but I have not figured out how to politely prevent it!

@Linelle @Bumble @Imhappy @acm

My guess is that Emily is purposefully fostering GW integration into Houzz. Note the topic buttons. It's clever really. Sort of easing us over.

Nothing, really. The adult family members are respectful as far as our space or things are concerned. We just had 24 people here for Thanksgiving and 8 of them spent the night and it was great fun and I didn't worry one second about something being inappropriately touched or handled.

We have a nice house and nice things, but nothing priceless or anything that I am going to cry over if it is ruined. We don't have little kids, but we entertain our siblings who do. I want them to have a good time when here, so if there is something I don't want broken, like a couple of collectible items and family heirlooms, I put it out of sight. (I am lucky in that if a child broke something, their parents would replace it.) I don't want to be Mean Aunt Bluebell who is always saying No and Don't Touch. I want them to have good memories of time spent with us! I do have a thing about clean windows, and I inwardly cringe a little when kiddo hands mark up my windows and french doors, but I always remind myself that tiny dirty hand prints on the windows can be cleaned, and someday when they are 40 an I am 82, I will fondly remember the good old days when my windows were smeared. :)

As to the people questioning the purpose of the question, I have seen others like it in the past and wondered if they are collecting ideas for Houzz Stories.

When a local plumber was fixing a small problem in our house that took no longer than an hour, he asked to use the bathroom - a half bath off the entryway. He was in his late 30's, and was assisting his dad, the main plumber. After they left, I noticed fingerprints on the wall above the commode. Not grimy dirty fingerprints, but fingerprints. I was truly disgusted. We won't use them as plumbers anymore. That was 7 years ago, and I still think about it when I clean the bathroom! By the way, I am enjoying all the posts - better than watching a comedy on tv.

@Terri Scott - I get up walk to the door, open and it and usher them out. I tell them I just realized I have plans. Once a friend quipped that she had just gotten to my house and I said I know, but you can go home to play on your Ipad or IPhone. She said "Oh is my using my IPad bothering you?" I said "no it won't be bothering me anymore because you will be using it in your home, not mine." I also don't log them onto my WIFI.

My Christmas decorations. I have them the way I want them, thank you.

we prefer they not touch the cat, as he's a jerk who bites harder than a pit bull.

I have always had many, many guests: professional friends who may stay across a weekend, university students who come for a meal, or, in times past, lived at my house. I have pretty things, and I have taught dozens of young women how to take care of porcelain, crystal and silver (no, don't scrub it with a scrubbing pad...). Almost all people are respectful of other people's things and if I see something I don't like going on, I feel very comfortable telling them to cease and desist. If someone's children decide to bounce on the sofa, I just scoop them up and put them somewhere else. The biggest problem for those of us with old furniture that doesn't have bulletproof finishes is water marks. I have to patrol a little bit at a party to make sure people are using coasters and not leaving wet marks on the tables. Same goes for house guests: " make sure you don't put your wet towels on the back of wooden chairs--use this rack instead."

I found the comment about books being somewhat private to be the oddest of the odd....I'm of the other persuasion. People with big book cabinets filled with a cookbook or two and a lot of "filler" are weird to me--with the obvious implication that the owners are among of the college-educated persons who, upon graduation, never read another book. What's the percentage? I forgot, but something very high, like 75%.