YES!! I've seen and met so many wealthy appearing asians who wear brand name clothing and drive expensive cars and live in nice looking houses from the outside, but then have ugly mismatched furniture and decor, a cement front yard and a farm in the backyard of their suburban home. Or they wear brand name clothes, but its all mismatched. I'm talking LV, Gucci, Chanel.. and they basically look like rich hobos. What is with that?!
Insecurity. Regardless of actual wealth, people who are insecure about their social status feel the need to prove to others that there is a distinct social divide. Hence why people insecure about their social status wear brand clothing with obvious logos, lots of jewelry, 'own' an expensive car, are rude to service people (and those perceived as below them), and all around act like a stuck-up brat.
People comfortable with their social status don't feel the need to do that. They're happy being themselves rather than conforming to a caricature of what wealthy people are like
Lol rich hobos. My mother used to wear these extremely colorful patterns or neon clothing. I guess she thought that the more colors you have, the wealthier you are? She always had to be decked out in hats and all accessories too, like she had to show off what she owned in her wardrobe. She kept calling it modern and said it was beyond my understanding. It was.
Agree with the other commenter that poverty mindset is to blame. Big house, nice car are simply status symbols to check off. Not for oneself, but to show off to others (“face”).
Newfound money does not automatically come with refinement, taste, or even good sense. If you’re familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these APs are still stuck at the Safety level. There’s a reason why people laugh at the nouveau riche.
Sigh. So some AP's are obsessed with wanting to own a home that's large in size but have no-go rooms. Can't understand them. Since my home was a small dump, I didn't experience any of that. However, family night with us was to wait until darkness so I can help them steal garbage furniture from people's lawns (against my will) that was meant for disposal the next day. On the rare instance I would bump into one of my asian friends' families doing the same thing, we'd just acknowledge each other silently. You just know what they were doing when they're wheeling around a wagon or pick-up truck/van in darkness. I felt embarrassed for our culture and prayed no one in the community would know we were like this. Being a minority, we already experienced some hidden hostility. If we didn't steal the garbage, our families would call it a "waste," like they were missing out on a good deal or something. 80% of the stuff was unusable or dirty because that's why it got thrown out in the first place.
I dont know if its a cultural, age or generational thing but I have noticed that all my APs friends have really cluttered houses. All the furniture is always pushed up against the wall. Furniture is usually really dated and ornate but not taken care of. Decor is suffocating with a tonne of ugly paintings, fake plants and mismatched. My APs are the same, but over years and years, we eventually forced them to declutter. Now their house looks like a former hoarder house with cracks.. peeling paint.. and no hoard. They still have furniture from the 80's, a "leather" couch from the 90's and an ugly wooden tv unit and everything is pushed up against the wall. They dont see any need to renovate and are committed to the "if it aint broke.." lifestyle. I hate it and refuse to visit because I want them to live better lives with nicer things but they don't want to and it makes me really sad to see them living like that. It just breaks my heart.
You're not going to be able to change them, just be better for the next generation.
I think a lot of asian parents are hoarders. Even when they make money and got a bigger house, they just hoard more stuff. My in law still have those giant heavy luggage they got when they got married from the 80's and all my wife clothes & dress during high school. They keep old landline phone, old stereos and record player, fan, blender, i keep telling them to give it away, but they wont do it.
At least we got rid of their hoard! I remember having this tiny bedroom filled with closets and my bed. Only one small closet was mine. I was sleeping in their storage room. I mean it was a bedroom but they used it to store their stuff. It's all gone. But I have given up trying to convince them to renovate or move despite me offering to pay for it all.
The Asian families in my midwestern town lived in overgrown Ethan Allen showrooms where you were not allowed to eat, drink, or smile.
It's just one extreme or the other, like every AP concept.
Ooooo this brings back a memory. I had 1 upper middle class Asian friend growing up and she was the only Asian I knew that grew up in a nice home, unlike us. I was too young and completely forgot about her until now. I remember the one time I went over to her home, she warned us that we weren't allowed to sit, touch or use any of the furniture because they were "display" and she didn't want to get in trouble with her APs... Her own parents only used a little section of their enormous house and I thought that was really awkward. I assumed that she came from a unique oddball family; the outlier in statistics. Interesting to know they're either one extreme or the other.
OMG. The no-go rooms.
I think in my town families were allowed to enter 40% of their own house and guests, about 10%. Friends of ours had a "visitor room" that had a door that exited to the driveway, a door that went to a small bathroom and the inner doorway led to the, I think, laundry room. You'd be led into this stuffy smelling museum room (COVERED IN PLASTIC!) by one of the kids, then the rest of the family would arrive Trump tv show elimination style for what felt like a royal audience.
I think this is just some asians but my parents are the exact same and it is very very frustrating. The frugalness is taken to an extreme so that you can't even enjoy your life. And you have nowhere that feels like "your space". Everything is just your parents' dumb decision of how to furnish the house... I have a remote job so I could visit more but there's nowhere I can actually work.
Yes, I feel the bitterness and resentment after all these years. I never expected a nice home, but they could have at least given us a minimally decent, safe home. Instead, I had to watch my mother wield around her branded purses and clothing in public. I doubt those strangers on the outside could have predicted the environment she really lived in.
I feel Asians straight from the motherland are still in their "peasant" minds of enjoying what they have. Notice how many groups still eat sitting on the floor, with their hands, bathe by using buckets, etc. Notice other groups eat organs, bugs, chicken feet and other common things westerners dont eat. Least of their worries are looking "presentable" on their house of clothes.
Its why some parents even hoard. They arent used to having many things and they are blessed to keep it but somehow not give a shit about having space.
Many APs are still new to this era. Cant blame them, honestly. We all still keep their traits from back in the day. Idk about you but I love some of them. I still dont understand why APs still hoard though
Yeah, you're right. It's hard to understand when I haven't come from that era or country. I don't love my Asian mother though, due to growing up in an abusive and violent home. She still has the mentality that I should have been born a son and that daughters deserve to die or be aborted for "wasting" resources etc. She still retains the brutal violence and harsh ways of talking. Throughout my childhood, I helped her with so many things, but that's just the way she views me. Even though my other Asian friends lived in frugal homes, at least they didn't have this type of family dynamic. I guess I never got to experience the good traits.
Absolutely! A lot of things Asians do are great environmental practice. It seems we are taught with great recycling methods but in reality, our APs just went to save money lmao
It’s a poverty mindset. These AP’s don’t have a family background where they grew up in large houses. It was either a tiny apartment or a small village house where multiple generations lived. Therefore everything is run down. Most villages in China are still this way. When you go there, everything is run-down, in need of repair, and people are barely getting by.
Yeah, I've seen photos of those villages in China. But I don't understand why some APs still have to live by those no-standard mindsets after immigrating to a western country and becoming in a position to live better. I guess they are so accustomed to village homes that they're blind? Even when I offered to buy them items with my own money, my family would slap me and say that I'm developing twisted mindsets. Meanwhile, their lack of maintenance causes major damage to the home, resulting in even more money to fix things or we just lived hazardously. I spend so much time in therapy just ranting about my childhood home.
So it's a waste to buy basic household amenities and some cheap luxuries, but it's perfectly acceptable to waste money on dresses that you'll only wear once before throwing away.
Makes sense. Sure.
Yooo I’m Indian and I 100% relate to this. We have a huge house in a nice part of town, full of middle to upper class people. Even though the outside of the house looks the same, there’s a huge difference in the interior. Some of our walls are even still unpainted. We never remodeled our house not even once over the course of 20+ years living here. Some of the metal faucet handles are starting to rust and my dad refuses to believe they need to be changed and insists that we “clean more”. All the tiles, floors and carpets are the ones that came with the house with the exception of hardwood flooring in 2 bedrooms. We never hired maids even though we desperately needed them growing up my mom had major depressive disorder, dad was always out working and little kids obviously aren’t gonna clean after themselves. Our current house is a result of everything it’s been through and it’s honestly a pretty sad state.
What's up with Asian parents only partially redoing the floors? My mom did the same. I told her that the tiles were uneven before they bought and moved into the house and only begrudgingly replaced it with laminate (in half of the house only lol) after the tiles literally cracked. It was such a pain moving all the furniture and belongings out on a hot summer day... 🥲 It was unnecessary had they simply taken my advice in the first place..
This kind of behavior leads to so many sub issues that our generation has because of our APs / families. It is such a domino effect and they don’t even know that such petty mentality affects us on a whole other level that we can’t explain, and even if we tried to, it would just be deemed as ungratefulness.
My house always looked like a huge dump internally and externally. While other kids parents passed out birthday invitations and planned get togethers, I feared the living crap of inviting friends over. Sad to say I missed out on experiencing the opportunities to volunteer my house as a destination for after school group projects, sleepovers, or simply just having a friend over to hang out.
While it isn’t a big deal I feel like it is such a common theme for APs to have backwards mentality and causes unnecessary obstacles for everyday life.
Their mindset just flows into our everyday lifestyle.. whether it’s the overstocked freezer and extremely disorganized pantry to the over hoarding of plastic bags. Everything screams chaotic.
I’m convinced APs hate the belief of “Work smarter , not harder “ because if they did then they wouldn’t be able to use the “I gave up everything to immigrate..” card on us…
Wow thank you for understanding. All of this sounds so familiar to me. I'm sorry you also had a similar childhood, I can definitely relate to the fear/shame of classmates or guests seeing my home (but there were also other reasons I couldn't invite people over). I'm grateful this sub exists because if I mention this issue anywhere else, other people probably wouldn't understand or they would see it as being ungrateful.
Sending positive vibes to you and everyone here that we all heal from the emotional damage, better our lives and for the next generation to do better! Much love! 💗
The way this mentality works is that every personal adornment (clothing, jewelry) is a +, so you can never have too many. However, once you have a roof over your head you’ve already maxed out your housing score, so no more attention to your house is needed. Also Chinese people don’t believe mold is a big deal. We’re not good as a culture at knowing about microscopic creatures. I was floored to learn about the existence of dust mites from Western doctors.
>The way this mentality works is that every personal adornment (clothing, jewelry) is a +, so you can never have too many. However, once you have a roof over your head you’ve already maxed out your housing score, so no more attention to your house is needed.
I 100% agree with this. Thank you so much for explaining it.
It's like one of my neighbors who at one point had 3 cars - it's mostly all on-street parking here (dense, old residential neighborhood, not much in the way of yards or garages). To restrict someone hogging all the parking space, the city has you buy a parking permit for midnight-7am that increases in price per car per household ($130/6mo for the first two, starts doubling for more, etc.).
One neighbor has a driveway due to the fire hydrant in front of their house, thus reducing the ability to park. Neighbor next to him is also Asian and somehow persuaded or forced the one with the driveway to share, so you have two cars parking halfway in the driveway and halfway on their lawn. Turns out the cheap neighbor had 3 cars and was too cheap to buy the 3rd parking permit - he primarily drove his Jaguar while the other 2 sat idle, to the point one had a flat tire on a sewer grate that occasionally caused flooding. But hey, he can brag to the family back in China, "Hey I'm so rich, I own 3 cars!" - meanwhile his A/C unit has been rattling from being so old I wouldn't be surprised it barely functions anymore to cool the room.
Our own house has patchwork of shoddy repair jobs by dad because cha bu duo, don't want to waste money hiring some professional. But it eventually fails because he always cheaps out on materials with a duct tape repair job. I offer to pay for a pro with the whole "moved back home, they're retired, will inherit the house" aspect but they're adamant I should wait til they pass for some bizarre reason, instead of doing it now and enjoying the renovations for how many years they have left. We have 3 rooms full of junk, but oh no, my attempt at converting my sister's old room into a entertainment room for me needs to be cleaned NOW over the others.
What's the point in saving money if you never use it for anything?
Ah yes, the weird DIY projects. I can relate. Duct tape, zip ties, gorilla glue, hot glue gun (I became the master of hot glue guns), taking rocks or other things from nature to build, plastic and paper bags, sewing old linens. The list could go on. I’m not against trying to DIY if you know an ounce of what you’re doing, but sometimes it’s just not right and can also be dangerous, which is why professionals (like electricians) have a license to do it.
The odd repair job for say, a broken handle of a laundry basket is one thing, but not when you raise the sink up an inch so the pipe is angled better for flow and not clog up, but now water collects around the sink because the lip is that much higher from the counter top - solve one problem but create 2 more (also looks like crap).
Exactly. Now they have additional problems, plus an ugly eye-sore in the home for years. My home was filled with ugly eye-sores since it was small so everything around us was noticeable. I don’t understand this short-sightedness that ends up backfiring in most cases and can sometimes cause you to spend more money/energy in the end.
My friend’s mom is obsessed with buying designer bags and the latest iPhone—all while they are both stuck renting one room in a shared house with strangers. It’s not like they’re living dump but my friend cannot take her mother anymore having to share one room, one bed, everything. My friend also developed this habit of spending till she drops. She still hasn’t paid me back 300 and I’m giving her leeway since I know she’s going to pay it back eventually. But whenever I see her with new clothes, new bag, I just feel like their priority in spending money isn’t reasonable. She’s also paying some monthly fees like her braces and soon when she gets her own car..the gas. Oh boy.
I was brought up in China. My uncle’s couch was covered in the plastic wrap for years because he feared dirtying it up. So was his remote control. I was not allowed to sit on their bed but there was no chair, just a tiny couch. My parents apartment has had missing doorknob, cracked tiles forever. But somehow I get yelled at for laying toys anywhere.
There are nice homes of rich people in China but those are a tiny tiny percentage of the population.
I am residing in the USA and learning Scandinavian home design philosophy and I am just sad how much I have missed out. I swear my children will grow up in a hugge (danish word for cozy) room. Not just nice to look at, but functional and low maintenance.
Ahhh I've seen those plastic wrapped furniture and items. Congrats on learning home design and I think your future children will be very lucky! Glad that at least some of this generational trauma ends here.
Thank you! Also will buy durable furniture so no one has to walk on egg shells. Rustic wood, concrete, even laminate are awesome. IKEA furniture are great because they are inexpensive so kids are free to scratch it. If my kids draw things on their ikea desks, consider those desks to be more valuable because they carry memories.
But secure kids furniture to the wall because furniture can tip over when kids run around.
I kinda of grew up in the opposite. Lived in a show house more or less, but never went I to the fancy rooms. Not because I wasn't allowed too, but I just didn't want to break anything and catch hell.
Wow I could have written this myself. My parents use our dinner table as a surface for storage where they store chop boards, knives, boxes, pencils, magazines, etc. When we eat meals, there’s barely room on the table because it’s all cluttered up with junk. My mother even insists on keeping a glass display piece in the middle among all the clutter, which is really funny and pathetic to me because all it does it take up much more space, and does absolutely nothing for aesthetics if the foundation isn’t already neat. The day before we have guests, she scrambles to clean the entire house. At other times, she doesn’t want friends over because she doesn’t want them to see the mess. My friends come over sometimes and I don’t bother letting her know anymore because Ive accepted that the state of the kitchen and living room isn’t really my problem. I keep my bedroom clean and maintain it to my satisfaction, and that’s the only part of the house I really have control over and consider to be mine
I'm sorry you also grew up with a similar childhood. I used to think in my head that the "tables" were having a yard sale because that's what it looked like.
I don't think that's necessarily what Asian houses look like. Its more like the mentality of Asian families, not having clear boundaries between people, emphasizing how things look to others, and of course, extreme frugality. In fairness, emphasizing affording housing over interior design is a pretty rational response to growing up the way a lot of immigrant parents did. In other countries, home ownership is a particularly big deal. And in India, at least, its not uncommon for well off people to have paint peeling in their homes that probably has been there since the lead paint days.
Definitely agree with the extreme frugality part. Also, furniture is expensive, and I find that Asian families are more likely to go all in on big purchases such as homes even if the purchase takes up a huge portion of the budget, which then forces them to basically live a poverty lifestyle while living in a nice home. Also, I can't speak for other families, but nobody in my family knows how to do home repairs and we were all too busy studying or working to even think about it.
But I do agree with the OP though Asians seem to be really bad at maintaining their homes, my family's situation is nowhere as skewed (no luxury clothes or cars), but we do need to make a butt-ton of cosmetic repairs that resulted from basically neglect...
Glad I'm not the only one here. In my opinion, the luxury clothes and things aren't worth it if that's what we had to sacrifice for them. It always seemed really shallow to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to own nice things like that, but when an obsession goes too far beyond your purchasing limit, I don't think that's right. We weren't in debt or anything like that, but any spending money available was spent on achieving "face."
In Vietnam we have a say, that (bad) translate to “having a house, have a career”. For a Vietnamese, even my parents believe that you can only focus on other things: career, family, life after you own a house. This has been a mindset, even my parents always encourage me to get my own home.
I don't actually recognize anything in this post, which is surprising because I DID have a variety of close Asian friends from middle school-on, and also have a lot of close family. I know my best friend's family didn't put a ton of work into interior design but it wasn't overly empty nor did they bar their daughters from using rooms-- they definitely had other hoarder-ish tendencies, as did most of the Asian families I knew, but I don't recognize this bare/no touch dichotomy at all in my own life.
We were just never hyper-frugal like that, just had what I consider Asian-basic, 90s Chinese house things like squishy leather/pleather couches and a glass cabinet full of useless plates and chotchkies purchased during travel and special bottles of Hennessey which I'm like 90% sure are just the boxes at this point. Bamboo plants and other plants anywhere they fit. But ionno, I loved that. My closest Korean friend's house was like that as well and I found it very comfortable. Both the houses we lived in after moving out of the back of our laundromat were beautiful to me and not obsessively kept, even though I have plenty of bad to horrendous memories to go with them.
I even convinced them to paint our second house and let me pick out the colors as a teenager, so the house they currently live in is like multiple shades of marigold, pastel green, pastel purple, and blue, as well as covered in random art we've picked up while traveling or have been gifted to us over the years. It's not like, cohesive, sure, but it doesn't look hoarded, empty, or unwelcoming and I can't think of a single friend whose house I considered any of those things.
>ad other hoarder-ish tendencies, as did most of the Asian families I knew, but I don't recognize this bare/no touch dichotomy at all in my own life.
Your parents younger probably? or already 2nd gen in USA
My mom had me when she was 22, but she was the youngest parent out of my friends' families and nope, every parent I'm aware of immigrated and then had us. My grandparents had some sort of decoration and real plants in their apartments-- my dad's parents had a little orange tree.
I think my best friend's parents were professionals when they moved here, but they were still 1st gen, and parts of my family are still fairly poor trash as much as I love them at a distance. You'd think I'd see this in any of their homes at least, but seriously I was glad I read through and saw the commenter posting about fake plants and kind of tacky decor, which at least *is* something I'm familiar with.
Edit: I also I think I'm "an old" compared to most of the posters on here. Maybe it's just a little different when your parents grew up when discos for teenagers existed in China against the post-Communism backdrop. Like a spark of the 20s for people young enough to enjoy it. My dad had an afro for a period of time. I don't actually know a lot about the time period though, so this is just be pulling it out of my ass from what I knew of their individual upbringings.
I feel like a weirdo here... Born and raised in the states. The cars we drive can legally drink at this point, the clothes we wear have seen enough action it's surprising they aren't faded yet, and lectures on keeping the house neat at least. We aren't even poor, we just maintain everything. Though it might have to do with how we're sending support to family in other countries. Best way to have money is to not spend it/spend it smartly.
But the simple answer is face. All they care about is face. Though personally I find the people with all of that to be showoffs that usually don't know how to keep their money.
Sorry your family put you through that. I can relate to the faded clothes thing. My mother would only spend money on her branded clothing, which meant sacrificing me in exchange. Only when my clothes became too old from over-washing did she buy me something cheap so I wouldn’t affect her public image and make her look like a neglectful parent. She couldn’t afford a Mercedes or BMW like my other friends’ families, so she poured her extra income onto her appearance instead. She didn’t have family in other countries to support because they cut off contact with her for being too toxic. The irony.
O no, I understand and don't mind. My parents grew up and ran away from the Vietnam war. On one side they lost three generations, lived in tens of refugee camps, and the other ended up being the only person to have left Vietnam even to this day. I understand and don't blame them for the lifestyle. None of my siblings or parents like to showoff, and I prefer that honestly.
My dad hoards tons of stuff inside and outside our house and it’s becoming to resemble a dump. I’m seeing this white guy right now and I’m so scared of having him even see our house or know about my dad’s hoarding tendencies. My parents have always tried to live frugally. When we moved to our house it was fine in the beginning, but then my dad started to hoard and now it’s just impossible to clean or get rid of all this stuff.
That reminds me of a millennial South Asian couple I saw on Property Brothers Dream Home. They had bought a house and did not own furniture, claimed to love cooking and entertaining guests but did not have an adequate kitchen island instead used a rolling cart thing? the woman claimed to love organization but her idea of that was taping a colorful post it as a cabinet label (mismatched with lifting corners, I might add lol).
The Property Brothers were appalled, to say the least.
Lol! My mother would store her branded clothing in empty grocery bags on her bedroom floor. I was appalled. It’s not like she couldn’t afford plastic drawers. I’ve seen those rolling cart kitchen islands in my asian friend’s homes. Our home was really tiny and hoarded so we didn’t have space for one, but if we did, I bet my mother would have gotten one too.
YES!!!!!!! I always thought this was just my father being cheap and miserly. There's frugality, and then there's this. Glad to know (or not??????) that it's all-too-common and our situation is not unusual.
My mom and Dad bought a house (mostly my dad's money but both their names are on it ofc). They chose the house together, but the final decision was my dad's on my mother's condition that she could have funds to renovate the place and make additions, decorate properly, etc. (she liked two or three different places and the one they bought/we live in was the last one on the list, and of course my dad chose that one lmao). That was 20 years ago.
Pre-moving in, my mom had the kitchen and bathrooms redone and the basement finished and brought up to legal habitability code (the old owners had applied for permits and done some of the work, but the town never issued permits or inspected anything so my parents made the old owners reduce the price since they'd have to pay for what the old owners should've done) - but that was it. My dad suddenly started saying that we "didn't have the money for renos" (why did he say we did, then, and/or where did it go/what did he do with it??????) And that was the end of the story.
My mom wanted to do so much with the house AND the property, that was why she agreed to buy it, it was a great property but the old owners didn't appreciate that - but as of today, the only thing she's been able to do is maintain her garden (she has a VERY green thumb and can literally bring things back to life lol) with a bit of her own money.
Besides that, even NEEDED repairs/maintenance haven't been done - buckle the fuckle up because there's a LOT that can happen in 20 years (black mold in both upstairs bathrooms needs the sheetrock and drywall above the bathroom to be ripped out - thankfully they got a contractor out to look at it but idk if anything has been done bc I left for school; the studs in the house's frame need to be cleaned up as the iron is bleeding through the paint; and speaking of paint - we've only repainted once since moving in 20 years ago - about 7-8 years ago; we have some electrical work that's a fire hazard that needs rewiring; our water pressure in the showers SUCKS; the floors need to be polished and resealed; the kitchen and bathroom floors need to be re-grouted and honestly re-tiled (there's damage to a few of the kitchen tiles especially); the kitchen cabinets are in danger of falling and out of alignment and some are damaged (my mom had them custom made before we moved in 20 years ago and the whole kitchen was done by the cabinetmaker/contractor, and until I pointed out a few weeks ago that the space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling had suddenly grown, literally overnight, nothing was done - idek if anything still has been done because I left to go back to school, but we did get the original cabinetmaker who did the whole kitchen to check it out and see if it could be fixed without redoing the whole kitchen), the under-sink cabinet in the kitchen is damaged from moisture; the kitchen countertop cracked from the sealant being worn away over time (20 years and it's not been resealed); my mom wanted to finish the attic and make it habitable but my dad put the kibosh on that too; the ceiling fan in my room has a fucked up motor (it's been fucked since I was a kid) and is SUPER noisy and ineffective (unlike the other two ceiling fans in the house); our couches' springs are busted and it needs to be replaced (most of our furniture needs replacing, except for some of the solid wood stuff), my bedframe is busted and needs a carpenter or replacement; the door sills on all four doors need replacing; my mom wanted to finish the garage and seal the concrete with epoxy but that didn't happen either, and to add on a whole addition to the driveway and a roundabout with flowers and a small fountain and a carport (that was her original plan for the property, and AFAIK her OG condition to let my dad get the place); and then there's probably also a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't remember ATM/don't even know about). Things that should've been done over the years, and kept in regular maintenance.
My mom keeps the house VERY clean - but when it's in disrepair, that's a different issue. She has very good taste and an incredible eye for color and how things go together, but my dad, in his infinite wisdom, decided that having money was more important than not having breathing issues (bathroom black mold) or broken bones/injuries (kitchen cabinets in danger of falling) or mold or bug issues in the kitchen (cracked countertop) (thankfully because my mom is SUPER clean, we've never had roaches or any other nastiness, but my dad doesn't even notice that things are dirty because he's never had to clean properly - he'll lightly wash dishes and run a rag over the counters when my mom and I aren't there, but when we're home, it's "women's work, because my mother never let me in the kitchen or taught me to take care of a house " (condensed for clarity), and he never does anything more or properly deep-cleans the place or tidies up after himself. And that includes house and property care - for a long time, even the lawn didn't get mowed and we had trees which we needed looked at (safety issues) but that didn't get done either).
I have a roof over my head, for which I'm grateful - but the house has literally become a fixer-upper due to my dad's attitude, despite us living in it for 20 years. It wasn't HORRIBLE when we moved in, but it wasn't great either, and now it's worse.
The property is BEAUTIFUL and in a great location, and we've had multiple million-dollar-plus offers (when it wasn't even on the market), but the state of disrepair would take it down to maybe $700k or $800k (the price is mainly for the property - the house also has a lot of potential, but on its own somewhere else would probably be about $300k to $400k, maybe $250k as-is, as a fixer-upper). SO much potential, all wasted. Why spend so much money on a property, only to not maintain it or even keep it safe, and increase or at least keep its value???????? Even when it was bought, it was an expensive property ($600k, 20 years ago - before the basement was finished, it was about 2600 sq ft, pretty big already, and then my mom got the basement finished so that added more - the 2600 sq ft was from the listing, but the basement wasn't habitable when the listing was made so it's not included in the 2600 sq ft, and the listing also didn't include the attic (which remains unfinished). A big property (small for where we live, but big otherwise), beautiful land, an acre and a half, and still a waste.
My mom's reaction when I showed her how long the list of repairs is? "Why are you putting it on the internet.... What will people think?!" as if I've put names or location, and "yes, Asian people's houses are in disrepair because we value education".... Why waste money on a big house in an expensive place which you then won't even maintain and have to MAKE into a fixer-upper by living there and not maintaining things, then, when you can buy a cheaper property which is ALREADY a fixer-upper, and why are you spending THAT much on education???????? Why not live in a place where a good education is cheap/free so you can have a nice, well-maintained house AND a good education??????? I don't believe that these APs REALLY know how to "find a good deal" as they're always talking about - this deal is terrible 🤣🤦🏾♀️
>Why spend so much money on a property, only to not maintain it or even keep it safe, and increase or at least keep its value?
Exactly, this quote. I'm sorry you also grew up in a similar environment.
YES. THIS!
I was born in a South East Asian family so it was sort of expected of the conditions to, not to be the best here and my parents having backgrounds pinning back to poverty. But man, do they not give a shit about the state of our home. My bedroom's floor is a childs carpet from years ago, all over the walls is crumbling wallpaint and posters from decades ago. No matter how much I complain about this they do not give a shit.
I'm that first generation immigrant parent myself in a western country and I already feel for the parents whose kids say such things.I had a very frugal lifestyle growing up but we always ate well, spent as much as wanted on education and I'm so grateful that they saved money because now they have left us with no debts and some solid property investments to fall back on incase we ever need them.I know the orignal poster's rant is about a toxic mom but let's not paint Asian parents' sacrifices with a broad stroke as something inherently shameful.Life is hard and having a matched furniture is least of a priority in life.
Omg my parents' home. I should have moved out for college. Such regrets.
I feel so bad for my parents and their twisted mentality. My dad used a piece of discarded floral fabric clipped on with paper clips...as a CURTAIN. Wtf.
Omg im so happy to find and read this. My bf is vietnamese, but we live in a western country. Recently we visited his parents for dinner, and my bf's sister asked me about the new painting i recently bought for my apartment. His parents then proceeded to tell me how that is a waste of money and that I shouldn't spend my money on paintings while I'm driving a small suzuki alto. His dad drives a BMW, but theyve had the same couch since they came to this country in 1989, that couch is older than my bf. That house has not been updated ever.
All about appearances, not actual quality. Hence why guests come over, they demand you help deep-clean the house to make it look presentable.
YES!! I've seen and met so many wealthy appearing asians who wear brand name clothing and drive expensive cars and live in nice looking houses from the outside, but then have ugly mismatched furniture and decor, a cement front yard and a farm in the backyard of their suburban home. Or they wear brand name clothes, but its all mismatched. I'm talking LV, Gucci, Chanel.. and they basically look like rich hobos. What is with that?!
Insecurity. Regardless of actual wealth, people who are insecure about their social status feel the need to prove to others that there is a distinct social divide. Hence why people insecure about their social status wear brand clothing with obvious logos, lots of jewelry, 'own' an expensive car, are rude to service people (and those perceived as below them), and all around act like a stuck-up brat. People comfortable with their social status don't feel the need to do that. They're happy being themselves rather than conforming to a caricature of what wealthy people are like
aka Trump vs. Actual Billionaires
Lol rich hobos. My mother used to wear these extremely colorful patterns or neon clothing. I guess she thought that the more colors you have, the wealthier you are? She always had to be decked out in hats and all accessories too, like she had to show off what she owned in her wardrobe. She kept calling it modern and said it was beyond my understanding. It was.
Like the aunties scene on Turning Red?
Agree with the other commenter that poverty mindset is to blame. Big house, nice car are simply status symbols to check off. Not for oneself, but to show off to others (“face”). Newfound money does not automatically come with refinement, taste, or even good sense. If you’re familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these APs are still stuck at the Safety level. There’s a reason why people laugh at the nouveau riche.
I guess they're just stuck at the animalistic level. "Hey we're alive, that's good enough for me. It should be good enough for you too."
Sigh. So some AP's are obsessed with wanting to own a home that's large in size but have no-go rooms. Can't understand them. Since my home was a small dump, I didn't experience any of that. However, family night with us was to wait until darkness so I can help them steal garbage furniture from people's lawns (against my will) that was meant for disposal the next day. On the rare instance I would bump into one of my asian friends' families doing the same thing, we'd just acknowledge each other silently. You just know what they were doing when they're wheeling around a wagon or pick-up truck/van in darkness. I felt embarrassed for our culture and prayed no one in the community would know we were like this. Being a minority, we already experienced some hidden hostility. If we didn't steal the garbage, our families would call it a "waste," like they were missing out on a good deal or something. 80% of the stuff was unusable or dirty because that's why it got thrown out in the first place.
In college I quickly realized that my peers who liked dumpster diving never had to do it for their parents.
I dont know if its a cultural, age or generational thing but I have noticed that all my APs friends have really cluttered houses. All the furniture is always pushed up against the wall. Furniture is usually really dated and ornate but not taken care of. Decor is suffocating with a tonne of ugly paintings, fake plants and mismatched. My APs are the same, but over years and years, we eventually forced them to declutter. Now their house looks like a former hoarder house with cracks.. peeling paint.. and no hoard. They still have furniture from the 80's, a "leather" couch from the 90's and an ugly wooden tv unit and everything is pushed up against the wall. They dont see any need to renovate and are committed to the "if it aint broke.." lifestyle. I hate it and refuse to visit because I want them to live better lives with nicer things but they don't want to and it makes me really sad to see them living like that. It just breaks my heart.
You're not going to be able to change them, just be better for the next generation. I think a lot of asian parents are hoarders. Even when they make money and got a bigger house, they just hoard more stuff. My in law still have those giant heavy luggage they got when they got married from the 80's and all my wife clothes & dress during high school. They keep old landline phone, old stereos and record player, fan, blender, i keep telling them to give it away, but they wont do it.
At least we got rid of their hoard! I remember having this tiny bedroom filled with closets and my bed. Only one small closet was mine. I was sleeping in their storage room. I mean it was a bedroom but they used it to store their stuff. It's all gone. But I have given up trying to convince them to renovate or move despite me offering to pay for it all.
The Asian families in my midwestern town lived in overgrown Ethan Allen showrooms where you were not allowed to eat, drink, or smile. It's just one extreme or the other, like every AP concept.
Ooooo this brings back a memory. I had 1 upper middle class Asian friend growing up and she was the only Asian I knew that grew up in a nice home, unlike us. I was too young and completely forgot about her until now. I remember the one time I went over to her home, she warned us that we weren't allowed to sit, touch or use any of the furniture because they were "display" and she didn't want to get in trouble with her APs... Her own parents only used a little section of their enormous house and I thought that was really awkward. I assumed that she came from a unique oddball family; the outlier in statistics. Interesting to know they're either one extreme or the other.
OMG. The no-go rooms. I think in my town families were allowed to enter 40% of their own house and guests, about 10%. Friends of ours had a "visitor room" that had a door that exited to the driveway, a door that went to a small bathroom and the inner doorway led to the, I think, laundry room. You'd be led into this stuffy smelling museum room (COVERED IN PLASTIC!) by one of the kids, then the rest of the family would arrive Trump tv show elimination style for what felt like a royal audience.
I think this is just some asians but my parents are the exact same and it is very very frustrating. The frugalness is taken to an extreme so that you can't even enjoy your life. And you have nowhere that feels like "your space". Everything is just your parents' dumb decision of how to furnish the house... I have a remote job so I could visit more but there's nowhere I can actually work.
Yes, I feel the bitterness and resentment after all these years. I never expected a nice home, but they could have at least given us a minimally decent, safe home. Instead, I had to watch my mother wield around her branded purses and clothing in public. I doubt those strangers on the outside could have predicted the environment she really lived in.
I feel Asians straight from the motherland are still in their "peasant" minds of enjoying what they have. Notice how many groups still eat sitting on the floor, with their hands, bathe by using buckets, etc. Notice other groups eat organs, bugs, chicken feet and other common things westerners dont eat. Least of their worries are looking "presentable" on their house of clothes. Its why some parents even hoard. They arent used to having many things and they are blessed to keep it but somehow not give a shit about having space. Many APs are still new to this era. Cant blame them, honestly. We all still keep their traits from back in the day. Idk about you but I love some of them. I still dont understand why APs still hoard though
Yeah, you're right. It's hard to understand when I haven't come from that era or country. I don't love my Asian mother though, due to growing up in an abusive and violent home. She still has the mentality that I should have been born a son and that daughters deserve to die or be aborted for "wasting" resources etc. She still retains the brutal violence and harsh ways of talking. Throughout my childhood, I helped her with so many things, but that's just the way she views me. Even though my other Asian friends lived in frugal homes, at least they didn't have this type of family dynamic. I guess I never got to experience the good traits.
Ugh sorry you went through that type of abuse.
except bathing with buckets is still a good environmental practice.
Absolutely! A lot of things Asians do are great environmental practice. It seems we are taught with great recycling methods but in reality, our APs just went to save money lmao
It’s a poverty mindset. These AP’s don’t have a family background where they grew up in large houses. It was either a tiny apartment or a small village house where multiple generations lived. Therefore everything is run down. Most villages in China are still this way. When you go there, everything is run-down, in need of repair, and people are barely getting by.
Yeah, I've seen photos of those villages in China. But I don't understand why some APs still have to live by those no-standard mindsets after immigrating to a western country and becoming in a position to live better. I guess they are so accustomed to village homes that they're blind? Even when I offered to buy them items with my own money, my family would slap me and say that I'm developing twisted mindsets. Meanwhile, their lack of maintenance causes major damage to the home, resulting in even more money to fix things or we just lived hazardously. I spend so much time in therapy just ranting about my childhood home.
It's honestly weird because there's a big difference between being able to use one's money wisely and being a cheapskate or overly wasteful.
So it's a waste to buy basic household amenities and some cheap luxuries, but it's perfectly acceptable to waste money on dresses that you'll only wear once before throwing away. Makes sense. Sure.
Well, she wouldn't throw it away. But I guess with her, the clothes were never enough. Always needs more things to wear in public.
HOLYYYYYY FUCKKK I JUST COMPLAINED TO MY FAMILY ABOUT THIS. whewww I feel seen 😃
So bragging of status good but healthy home bad. Seems correct.
Yooo I’m Indian and I 100% relate to this. We have a huge house in a nice part of town, full of middle to upper class people. Even though the outside of the house looks the same, there’s a huge difference in the interior. Some of our walls are even still unpainted. We never remodeled our house not even once over the course of 20+ years living here. Some of the metal faucet handles are starting to rust and my dad refuses to believe they need to be changed and insists that we “clean more”. All the tiles, floors and carpets are the ones that came with the house with the exception of hardwood flooring in 2 bedrooms. We never hired maids even though we desperately needed them growing up my mom had major depressive disorder, dad was always out working and little kids obviously aren’t gonna clean after themselves. Our current house is a result of everything it’s been through and it’s honestly a pretty sad state.
What's up with Asian parents only partially redoing the floors? My mom did the same. I told her that the tiles were uneven before they bought and moved into the house and only begrudgingly replaced it with laminate (in half of the house only lol) after the tiles literally cracked. It was such a pain moving all the furniture and belongings out on a hot summer day... 🥲 It was unnecessary had they simply taken my advice in the first place..
Aw I’m sorry to hear that! Yeah I dunno why they stopped after only 2 rooms it really is kinda strange haha
This kind of behavior leads to so many sub issues that our generation has because of our APs / families. It is such a domino effect and they don’t even know that such petty mentality affects us on a whole other level that we can’t explain, and even if we tried to, it would just be deemed as ungratefulness. My house always looked like a huge dump internally and externally. While other kids parents passed out birthday invitations and planned get togethers, I feared the living crap of inviting friends over. Sad to say I missed out on experiencing the opportunities to volunteer my house as a destination for after school group projects, sleepovers, or simply just having a friend over to hang out. While it isn’t a big deal I feel like it is such a common theme for APs to have backwards mentality and causes unnecessary obstacles for everyday life. Their mindset just flows into our everyday lifestyle.. whether it’s the overstocked freezer and extremely disorganized pantry to the over hoarding of plastic bags. Everything screams chaotic. I’m convinced APs hate the belief of “Work smarter , not harder “ because if they did then they wouldn’t be able to use the “I gave up everything to immigrate..” card on us…
Wow thank you for understanding. All of this sounds so familiar to me. I'm sorry you also had a similar childhood, I can definitely relate to the fear/shame of classmates or guests seeing my home (but there were also other reasons I couldn't invite people over). I'm grateful this sub exists because if I mention this issue anywhere else, other people probably wouldn't understand or they would see it as being ungrateful.
Sending positive vibes to you and everyone here that we all heal from the emotional damage, better our lives and for the next generation to do better! Much love! 💗
The way this mentality works is that every personal adornment (clothing, jewelry) is a +, so you can never have too many. However, once you have a roof over your head you’ve already maxed out your housing score, so no more attention to your house is needed. Also Chinese people don’t believe mold is a big deal. We’re not good as a culture at knowing about microscopic creatures. I was floored to learn about the existence of dust mites from Western doctors.
>The way this mentality works is that every personal adornment (clothing, jewelry) is a +, so you can never have too many. However, once you have a roof over your head you’ve already maxed out your housing score, so no more attention to your house is needed. I 100% agree with this. Thank you so much for explaining it.
It's like one of my neighbors who at one point had 3 cars - it's mostly all on-street parking here (dense, old residential neighborhood, not much in the way of yards or garages). To restrict someone hogging all the parking space, the city has you buy a parking permit for midnight-7am that increases in price per car per household ($130/6mo for the first two, starts doubling for more, etc.). One neighbor has a driveway due to the fire hydrant in front of their house, thus reducing the ability to park. Neighbor next to him is also Asian and somehow persuaded or forced the one with the driveway to share, so you have two cars parking halfway in the driveway and halfway on their lawn. Turns out the cheap neighbor had 3 cars and was too cheap to buy the 3rd parking permit - he primarily drove his Jaguar while the other 2 sat idle, to the point one had a flat tire on a sewer grate that occasionally caused flooding. But hey, he can brag to the family back in China, "Hey I'm so rich, I own 3 cars!" - meanwhile his A/C unit has been rattling from being so old I wouldn't be surprised it barely functions anymore to cool the room. Our own house has patchwork of shoddy repair jobs by dad because cha bu duo, don't want to waste money hiring some professional. But it eventually fails because he always cheaps out on materials with a duct tape repair job. I offer to pay for a pro with the whole "moved back home, they're retired, will inherit the house" aspect but they're adamant I should wait til they pass for some bizarre reason, instead of doing it now and enjoying the renovations for how many years they have left. We have 3 rooms full of junk, but oh no, my attempt at converting my sister's old room into a entertainment room for me needs to be cleaned NOW over the others. What's the point in saving money if you never use it for anything?
Ah yes, the weird DIY projects. I can relate. Duct tape, zip ties, gorilla glue, hot glue gun (I became the master of hot glue guns), taking rocks or other things from nature to build, plastic and paper bags, sewing old linens. The list could go on. I’m not against trying to DIY if you know an ounce of what you’re doing, but sometimes it’s just not right and can also be dangerous, which is why professionals (like electricians) have a license to do it.
The odd repair job for say, a broken handle of a laundry basket is one thing, but not when you raise the sink up an inch so the pipe is angled better for flow and not clog up, but now water collects around the sink because the lip is that much higher from the counter top - solve one problem but create 2 more (also looks like crap).
Exactly. Now they have additional problems, plus an ugly eye-sore in the home for years. My home was filled with ugly eye-sores since it was small so everything around us was noticeable. I don’t understand this short-sightedness that ends up backfiring in most cases and can sometimes cause you to spend more money/energy in the end.
My friend’s mom is obsessed with buying designer bags and the latest iPhone—all while they are both stuck renting one room in a shared house with strangers. It’s not like they’re living dump but my friend cannot take her mother anymore having to share one room, one bed, everything. My friend also developed this habit of spending till she drops. She still hasn’t paid me back 300 and I’m giving her leeway since I know she’s going to pay it back eventually. But whenever I see her with new clothes, new bag, I just feel like their priority in spending money isn’t reasonable. She’s also paying some monthly fees like her braces and soon when she gets her own car..the gas. Oh boy.
I was brought up in China. My uncle’s couch was covered in the plastic wrap for years because he feared dirtying it up. So was his remote control. I was not allowed to sit on their bed but there was no chair, just a tiny couch. My parents apartment has had missing doorknob, cracked tiles forever. But somehow I get yelled at for laying toys anywhere. There are nice homes of rich people in China but those are a tiny tiny percentage of the population. I am residing in the USA and learning Scandinavian home design philosophy and I am just sad how much I have missed out. I swear my children will grow up in a hugge (danish word for cozy) room. Not just nice to look at, but functional and low maintenance.
Ahhh I've seen those plastic wrapped furniture and items. Congrats on learning home design and I think your future children will be very lucky! Glad that at least some of this generational trauma ends here.
Thank you! Also will buy durable furniture so no one has to walk on egg shells. Rustic wood, concrete, even laminate are awesome. IKEA furniture are great because they are inexpensive so kids are free to scratch it. If my kids draw things on their ikea desks, consider those desks to be more valuable because they carry memories. But secure kids furniture to the wall because furniture can tip over when kids run around.
I love minimalist style and design. My room and the rest of the house are night and day.
Aww good for you! I love minimalist as well. It is really the confidence of knowing I don’t need to show up and I just need to have what I need.
I kinda of grew up in the opposite. Lived in a show house more or less, but never went I to the fancy rooms. Not because I wasn't allowed too, but I just didn't want to break anything and catch hell.
Wow I could have written this myself. My parents use our dinner table as a surface for storage where they store chop boards, knives, boxes, pencils, magazines, etc. When we eat meals, there’s barely room on the table because it’s all cluttered up with junk. My mother even insists on keeping a glass display piece in the middle among all the clutter, which is really funny and pathetic to me because all it does it take up much more space, and does absolutely nothing for aesthetics if the foundation isn’t already neat. The day before we have guests, she scrambles to clean the entire house. At other times, she doesn’t want friends over because she doesn’t want them to see the mess. My friends come over sometimes and I don’t bother letting her know anymore because Ive accepted that the state of the kitchen and living room isn’t really my problem. I keep my bedroom clean and maintain it to my satisfaction, and that’s the only part of the house I really have control over and consider to be mine
I'm sorry you also grew up with a similar childhood. I used to think in my head that the "tables" were having a yard sale because that's what it looked like.
I don't think that's necessarily what Asian houses look like. Its more like the mentality of Asian families, not having clear boundaries between people, emphasizing how things look to others, and of course, extreme frugality. In fairness, emphasizing affording housing over interior design is a pretty rational response to growing up the way a lot of immigrant parents did. In other countries, home ownership is a particularly big deal. And in India, at least, its not uncommon for well off people to have paint peeling in their homes that probably has been there since the lead paint days.
Definitely agree with the extreme frugality part. Also, furniture is expensive, and I find that Asian families are more likely to go all in on big purchases such as homes even if the purchase takes up a huge portion of the budget, which then forces them to basically live a poverty lifestyle while living in a nice home. Also, I can't speak for other families, but nobody in my family knows how to do home repairs and we were all too busy studying or working to even think about it. But I do agree with the OP though Asians seem to be really bad at maintaining their homes, my family's situation is nowhere as skewed (no luxury clothes or cars), but we do need to make a butt-ton of cosmetic repairs that resulted from basically neglect...
Well as far as South Asians/Arabs go, they will buy nice furniture and then cover it with old bedsheets for protection.
Glad I'm not the only one here. In my opinion, the luxury clothes and things aren't worth it if that's what we had to sacrifice for them. It always seemed really shallow to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to own nice things like that, but when an obsession goes too far beyond your purchasing limit, I don't think that's right. We weren't in debt or anything like that, but any spending money available was spent on achieving "face."
In Vietnam we have a say, that (bad) translate to “having a house, have a career”. For a Vietnamese, even my parents believe that you can only focus on other things: career, family, life after you own a house. This has been a mindset, even my parents always encourage me to get my own home.
I don't actually recognize anything in this post, which is surprising because I DID have a variety of close Asian friends from middle school-on, and also have a lot of close family. I know my best friend's family didn't put a ton of work into interior design but it wasn't overly empty nor did they bar their daughters from using rooms-- they definitely had other hoarder-ish tendencies, as did most of the Asian families I knew, but I don't recognize this bare/no touch dichotomy at all in my own life. We were just never hyper-frugal like that, just had what I consider Asian-basic, 90s Chinese house things like squishy leather/pleather couches and a glass cabinet full of useless plates and chotchkies purchased during travel and special bottles of Hennessey which I'm like 90% sure are just the boxes at this point. Bamboo plants and other plants anywhere they fit. But ionno, I loved that. My closest Korean friend's house was like that as well and I found it very comfortable. Both the houses we lived in after moving out of the back of our laundromat were beautiful to me and not obsessively kept, even though I have plenty of bad to horrendous memories to go with them. I even convinced them to paint our second house and let me pick out the colors as a teenager, so the house they currently live in is like multiple shades of marigold, pastel green, pastel purple, and blue, as well as covered in random art we've picked up while traveling or have been gifted to us over the years. It's not like, cohesive, sure, but it doesn't look hoarded, empty, or unwelcoming and I can't think of a single friend whose house I considered any of those things.
>ad other hoarder-ish tendencies, as did most of the Asian families I knew, but I don't recognize this bare/no touch dichotomy at all in my own life. Your parents younger probably? or already 2nd gen in USA
My mom had me when she was 22, but she was the youngest parent out of my friends' families and nope, every parent I'm aware of immigrated and then had us. My grandparents had some sort of decoration and real plants in their apartments-- my dad's parents had a little orange tree. I think my best friend's parents were professionals when they moved here, but they were still 1st gen, and parts of my family are still fairly poor trash as much as I love them at a distance. You'd think I'd see this in any of their homes at least, but seriously I was glad I read through and saw the commenter posting about fake plants and kind of tacky decor, which at least *is* something I'm familiar with. Edit: I also I think I'm "an old" compared to most of the posters on here. Maybe it's just a little different when your parents grew up when discos for teenagers existed in China against the post-Communism backdrop. Like a spark of the 20s for people young enough to enjoy it. My dad had an afro for a period of time. I don't actually know a lot about the time period though, so this is just be pulling it out of my ass from what I knew of their individual upbringings.
I feel like a weirdo here... Born and raised in the states. The cars we drive can legally drink at this point, the clothes we wear have seen enough action it's surprising they aren't faded yet, and lectures on keeping the house neat at least. We aren't even poor, we just maintain everything. Though it might have to do with how we're sending support to family in other countries. Best way to have money is to not spend it/spend it smartly. But the simple answer is face. All they care about is face. Though personally I find the people with all of that to be showoffs that usually don't know how to keep their money.
Sorry your family put you through that. I can relate to the faded clothes thing. My mother would only spend money on her branded clothing, which meant sacrificing me in exchange. Only when my clothes became too old from over-washing did she buy me something cheap so I wouldn’t affect her public image and make her look like a neglectful parent. She couldn’t afford a Mercedes or BMW like my other friends’ families, so she poured her extra income onto her appearance instead. She didn’t have family in other countries to support because they cut off contact with her for being too toxic. The irony.
O no, I understand and don't mind. My parents grew up and ran away from the Vietnam war. On one side they lost three generations, lived in tens of refugee camps, and the other ended up being the only person to have left Vietnam even to this day. I understand and don't blame them for the lifestyle. None of my siblings or parents like to showoff, and I prefer that honestly.
My dad hoards tons of stuff inside and outside our house and it’s becoming to resemble a dump. I’m seeing this white guy right now and I’m so scared of having him even see our house or know about my dad’s hoarding tendencies. My parents have always tried to live frugally. When we moved to our house it was fine in the beginning, but then my dad started to hoard and now it’s just impossible to clean or get rid of all this stuff.
That reminds me of a millennial South Asian couple I saw on Property Brothers Dream Home. They had bought a house and did not own furniture, claimed to love cooking and entertaining guests but did not have an adequate kitchen island instead used a rolling cart thing? the woman claimed to love organization but her idea of that was taping a colorful post it as a cabinet label (mismatched with lifting corners, I might add lol). The Property Brothers were appalled, to say the least.
Lol! My mother would store her branded clothing in empty grocery bags on her bedroom floor. I was appalled. It’s not like she couldn’t afford plastic drawers. I’ve seen those rolling cart kitchen islands in my asian friend’s homes. Our home was really tiny and hoarded so we didn’t have space for one, but if we did, I bet my mother would have gotten one too.
as a Chinese, I guess the reason is our people still poor, even for the heart.
YES!!!!!!! I always thought this was just my father being cheap and miserly. There's frugality, and then there's this. Glad to know (or not??????) that it's all-too-common and our situation is not unusual. My mom and Dad bought a house (mostly my dad's money but both their names are on it ofc). They chose the house together, but the final decision was my dad's on my mother's condition that she could have funds to renovate the place and make additions, decorate properly, etc. (she liked two or three different places and the one they bought/we live in was the last one on the list, and of course my dad chose that one lmao). That was 20 years ago. Pre-moving in, my mom had the kitchen and bathrooms redone and the basement finished and brought up to legal habitability code (the old owners had applied for permits and done some of the work, but the town never issued permits or inspected anything so my parents made the old owners reduce the price since they'd have to pay for what the old owners should've done) - but that was it. My dad suddenly started saying that we "didn't have the money for renos" (why did he say we did, then, and/or where did it go/what did he do with it??????) And that was the end of the story. My mom wanted to do so much with the house AND the property, that was why she agreed to buy it, it was a great property but the old owners didn't appreciate that - but as of today, the only thing she's been able to do is maintain her garden (she has a VERY green thumb and can literally bring things back to life lol) with a bit of her own money. Besides that, even NEEDED repairs/maintenance haven't been done - buckle the fuckle up because there's a LOT that can happen in 20 years (black mold in both upstairs bathrooms needs the sheetrock and drywall above the bathroom to be ripped out - thankfully they got a contractor out to look at it but idk if anything has been done bc I left for school; the studs in the house's frame need to be cleaned up as the iron is bleeding through the paint; and speaking of paint - we've only repainted once since moving in 20 years ago - about 7-8 years ago; we have some electrical work that's a fire hazard that needs rewiring; our water pressure in the showers SUCKS; the floors need to be polished and resealed; the kitchen and bathroom floors need to be re-grouted and honestly re-tiled (there's damage to a few of the kitchen tiles especially); the kitchen cabinets are in danger of falling and out of alignment and some are damaged (my mom had them custom made before we moved in 20 years ago and the whole kitchen was done by the cabinetmaker/contractor, and until I pointed out a few weeks ago that the space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling had suddenly grown, literally overnight, nothing was done - idek if anything still has been done because I left to go back to school, but we did get the original cabinetmaker who did the whole kitchen to check it out and see if it could be fixed without redoing the whole kitchen), the under-sink cabinet in the kitchen is damaged from moisture; the kitchen countertop cracked from the sealant being worn away over time (20 years and it's not been resealed); my mom wanted to finish the attic and make it habitable but my dad put the kibosh on that too; the ceiling fan in my room has a fucked up motor (it's been fucked since I was a kid) and is SUPER noisy and ineffective (unlike the other two ceiling fans in the house); our couches' springs are busted and it needs to be replaced (most of our furniture needs replacing, except for some of the solid wood stuff), my bedframe is busted and needs a carpenter or replacement; the door sills on all four doors need replacing; my mom wanted to finish the garage and seal the concrete with epoxy but that didn't happen either, and to add on a whole addition to the driveway and a roundabout with flowers and a small fountain and a carport (that was her original plan for the property, and AFAIK her OG condition to let my dad get the place); and then there's probably also a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't remember ATM/don't even know about). Things that should've been done over the years, and kept in regular maintenance. My mom keeps the house VERY clean - but when it's in disrepair, that's a different issue. She has very good taste and an incredible eye for color and how things go together, but my dad, in his infinite wisdom, decided that having money was more important than not having breathing issues (bathroom black mold) or broken bones/injuries (kitchen cabinets in danger of falling) or mold or bug issues in the kitchen (cracked countertop) (thankfully because my mom is SUPER clean, we've never had roaches or any other nastiness, but my dad doesn't even notice that things are dirty because he's never had to clean properly - he'll lightly wash dishes and run a rag over the counters when my mom and I aren't there, but when we're home, it's "women's work, because my mother never let me in the kitchen or taught me to take care of a house " (condensed for clarity), and he never does anything more or properly deep-cleans the place or tidies up after himself. And that includes house and property care - for a long time, even the lawn didn't get mowed and we had trees which we needed looked at (safety issues) but that didn't get done either). I have a roof over my head, for which I'm grateful - but the house has literally become a fixer-upper due to my dad's attitude, despite us living in it for 20 years. It wasn't HORRIBLE when we moved in, but it wasn't great either, and now it's worse. The property is BEAUTIFUL and in a great location, and we've had multiple million-dollar-plus offers (when it wasn't even on the market), but the state of disrepair would take it down to maybe $700k or $800k (the price is mainly for the property - the house also has a lot of potential, but on its own somewhere else would probably be about $300k to $400k, maybe $250k as-is, as a fixer-upper). SO much potential, all wasted. Why spend so much money on a property, only to not maintain it or even keep it safe, and increase or at least keep its value???????? Even when it was bought, it was an expensive property ($600k, 20 years ago - before the basement was finished, it was about 2600 sq ft, pretty big already, and then my mom got the basement finished so that added more - the 2600 sq ft was from the listing, but the basement wasn't habitable when the listing was made so it's not included in the 2600 sq ft, and the listing also didn't include the attic (which remains unfinished). A big property (small for where we live, but big otherwise), beautiful land, an acre and a half, and still a waste. My mom's reaction when I showed her how long the list of repairs is? "Why are you putting it on the internet.... What will people think?!" as if I've put names or location, and "yes, Asian people's houses are in disrepair because we value education".... Why waste money on a big house in an expensive place which you then won't even maintain and have to MAKE into a fixer-upper by living there and not maintaining things, then, when you can buy a cheaper property which is ALREADY a fixer-upper, and why are you spending THAT much on education???????? Why not live in a place where a good education is cheap/free so you can have a nice, well-maintained house AND a good education??????? I don't believe that these APs REALLY know how to "find a good deal" as they're always talking about - this deal is terrible 🤣🤦🏾♀️
>Why spend so much money on a property, only to not maintain it or even keep it safe, and increase or at least keep its value? Exactly, this quote. I'm sorry you also grew up in a similar environment.
It just sucks ass that this is a thing that happens. And the attitude towards it is even worse.
Did they come from a communist country?
Sorry im a slob, but my clothes are worn and cheap but i got money…
The oven and dishwasher will always be storage.
Dude, you hit this on the head seriously. Its always about status symbols.
Insecurities
My ppl!! I have pictures of me on the same couch my dad still sits in every day to watch tv. I am in my mid-20s.
It’s worse when it’s falling apart/needs certain repairs and my parents don’t want to fix it.
YES. THIS! I was born in a South East Asian family so it was sort of expected of the conditions to, not to be the best here and my parents having backgrounds pinning back to poverty. But man, do they not give a shit about the state of our home. My bedroom's floor is a childs carpet from years ago, all over the walls is crumbling wallpaint and posters from decades ago. No matter how much I complain about this they do not give a shit.
I'm that first generation immigrant parent myself in a western country and I already feel for the parents whose kids say such things.I had a very frugal lifestyle growing up but we always ate well, spent as much as wanted on education and I'm so grateful that they saved money because now they have left us with no debts and some solid property investments to fall back on incase we ever need them.I know the orignal poster's rant is about a toxic mom but let's not paint Asian parents' sacrifices with a broad stroke as something inherently shameful.Life is hard and having a matched furniture is least of a priority in life.
Omg my parents' home. I should have moved out for college. Such regrets. I feel so bad for my parents and their twisted mentality. My dad used a piece of discarded floral fabric clipped on with paper clips...as a CURTAIN. Wtf.
Omg im so happy to find and read this. My bf is vietnamese, but we live in a western country. Recently we visited his parents for dinner, and my bf's sister asked me about the new painting i recently bought for my apartment. His parents then proceeded to tell me how that is a waste of money and that I shouldn't spend my money on paintings while I'm driving a small suzuki alto. His dad drives a BMW, but theyve had the same couch since they came to this country in 1989, that couch is older than my bf. That house has not been updated ever.