You Should Probably Stop Watching Home Improvement Shows.
Like many people, my wife and I love to watch real estate reality shows from House Hunters or Property Brothers . Everyone knows these shows are soothing, goofy fun that follows a formula so rigid that you can predict what any pair of house hunters will say with near-perfect accuracy. These shows also lie to you about literally every aspect of the real estate experience, from what it takes to buy a home to the effort (and money) required to renovate it.
So you have a form of entertainment that requires little effort or attention and intersects with almost universal human experience. It’s no wonder so many people enjoy relaxing watching a stupid contractor and a perpetually frazzled designer figure out how to renovate an entire house with a little extra change in someone’s couch. But as entertaining as these home renovation shows are, you should probably cut back on them or even stop watching them altogether. Because they make us all unhappy.
home improvement show unreal
We all know that these shows lie to us, but we do not always understand the complexity of their deception. The budgets discussed on these shows are completely unrealistic and are usually topped off with enticing offers from vendors who want their products on TV. Timing – even with “dramatic” twists involving hidden mold or unexpectedly load-bearing walls – is a fantasy, as is the idea of one or two charming hosts doing all or most of the work. These shows love to make home renovations easy and the results beautiful, but often the updates are superficial and later revealed to be made from poor quality work and cheap materials .
Result? The frustration and sadness when you contact a contractor and they tell you the true cost of your renovation dream, or when you are in the third month of what you expected to be a one-month renovation, or when your plumber announces that you need a whole a new sewer line and you’re already heavily in debt from the rest of your new bathroom.
Home improvement shows get in the way of your happiness
When my wife and I bought our house, we hated pretty much everything the previous owner had done to the interior and decided to change it all. And if we ever sell this house, I’m pretty sure the next owner will take a look at my homemade renovation and do the same. At the same time, we love this house and enjoy living in it immensely, but it has been shown that watching a lot of home renovation shows makes people more concerned about the attractiveness of their homes, because they teach us to always compare our homes to the one we have. what we see on TV.
Not only does the constant worry about your home’s resale value (and what people might say about it when HGTV sends a crew there) makes us miserable, but more often than not, we don’t even enjoy watching these shows. Hatred of renovation shows is quite common because hating people with slightly different tastes directly stimulates our pleasure centers. But this is unhealthy because watching hate eventually leads us to depression, reinforcing the negative emotions in our lives.
Another way in which renovation and real estate displays make us miserable is more subtle: they impose a bland, boring, conservative vision of modern life and relationships . It seems like in every episode of Househunters, the man is budget-conscious and the woman is bragging that she needs all the closet space. They slightly offend each other and get into petty arguments in front of the whole world. And every renovation show seems to be starring a goofy male contractor who treats manual labor like a child playing with toys, and a female designer who spends most of the show rolling her eyes at his antics because gender roles. It literally takes some of the worst comedic clichés found in bad sitcoms and gives them “reality”.
Home improvement shows make design boring
Finally, home renovation reality shows just make our houses boring.
The renovations we see on TV are always more or less the same – HGTV and similar programs have a standard design feel that includes a lot of open concept, ship husks and gray paint, and this in turn has made many home renovations intimidating . . similar , as viewers, accustomed to seeing this style of design as acceptable and desirable, tend to replicate it. Final result? People living in a strange house and sad about it. People are worried about whether potential buyers will like their guest bathroom, even if they are not going to put their house up for sale.
A house is an investment, and if you decide to sell it, there is an argument for refurbishing it to make it attractive to potential buyers. But you also have to live there, which means you have to be comfortable and comfortable in that space. Trying to build a magazine home in case you have to suddenly sell it is a pretty weird way to enjoy life.
Like anything that is bad for you, repair shows can be obtained in moderation. Just be aware of the negative impact they can have on your life and remember that your home may not be perfect, but it is yours .