We walk in the woods around our home, but I drive past the homes that you walk by. I notice peoples’ yards. We spend one day a week mowing, trimming, landscaping, etc and I notice the slovenly yards.
I don’t understand why other people would care whether your blinds are open or closed.
I like them open generally as I like natural light coming in, but close them when it’s too hot or sometimes at night. If people walk past and want to stickybeak, good for them, I don’t care.
When I go for my morning walk, I see houses with closed blinds and others with open blinds and see what they’re watching on TV, but that’s incidental. I’m mainly focused on the walk as a form of meditation and scanning houses for design ideas. Checking out gardens and styles.
Mostly the yards. I notice the trees and shrubs. What sort of grass they have, and whether it’s a monoculture. Whether there’s anything interesting growing in the cracks in the sidewalk. Any bunnies or other animals? And of course the people who are outdoors. Kids playing ball, landscapers, adults sitting on the stoop, that sort of thing.
I also look at the stone walls, with real interest since we may need to have one built to replace a crumbling concrete wall.
And i do notice architecture a bit.
Your interests sound very similar to ours. But when you are noticing architecture, do you notice whether a home appears to be lived in? To my eye (and in our moderate climate), uniformly continually closed curtains creates an appearance of unoccupancy.
I really find it curious that so many people continue to phrase this as people “caring” that the curtains are closed, as opposed to “noticing”. Humans are a very visually oriented species. And when you see something, it is a very common reaction to try to make up a story/try to make sense of/“categorize” what you see.
But when someone is trying to argue a position (as opposed to presenting facts), it is very common for them to misrepresent this activity by asking, “Why do you CARE.”
If you walk by a house one day and see its curtains are closed, then you are noticing.
If you are keeping track of what houses keep their curtains closed day after day, then it seems as though you care about it, and that makes one wonder why.
As I said upthread, the only houses I could tell you about their curtain habits are the ones where, not only can I watch TV over their heads as I walk by on the sidewalk, but I also see that they are watching Fox News.
It’s more a case of we don’t CARE about the status of neighbors’ window treatments, and find it a bit odd that anyone would be perturbed about a lack of interest.
I realize I am well past the point of being pedantic, but if you notice something repeatedly, does that not result in an awareness of that - without suggesting that you “care” about it?
Unless we need to define “care”. I “care” about being aware of countless aspects of my surroundings, without necessarily placing value judgments upon what I perceive.
I look at their front gardens and comment on the planting (or lack of), the colour of the house (we’re in a neighbourhood where crazy house colours is a thing), and we comment on anything about windows, it’s WHY do some people put their massive TVs in the bay window! Why would you want to block the light like that? It’s just marginally worse than hanging a TV above the fireplace.
How they cover their windows is so all over the place - curtains, blinds, venetian blinds, frosting - that I don’t pay it much regard.
It depends on what you prioritize about remembering, I suppose. I’ve walked the streets of my neighborhood thousands of times, and, while I may notice that a particular house’s curtains are drawn one day, I wouldn’t have any good reason to remember that on a following day. There are quite a number of houses in my neighborhood, and I’d have to write it down to keep track of which has blinds open or closed on what day or time.
The only ones I remember are the ones that are notable for some reason, and that’s usually because their blinds are open in a way that makes me uncomfortable about invading their privacy simply by passing by on the sidewalk.
If you are trying to make sense and making up stories to justify what you see, that sounds very much like value judgements to me. Especially when most of those stories that have been proposed in this thread implicate the homeowner as doing something wrong by leaving their blinds facing the street closed.
I really don’t want to belabor this, but we apparently differ greatly on our perception of human nature/behavior, and possibly some aspects of language.
My understanding is that people generally “make up stories” to make sense of the input they receive through their senses. This CAN be done for the purpose of making value judgements - but it can also be done more objectively - simply for the purpose of categorizing - “filing” things in your brain.
My personal experience and opinion is that one can notice a great many things without necessarily going the extra step of assigning value. You are free to use such terms differently. I can observe that it is raining outside my window, and that we have had quite a bit of rain so far this spring. That does not necessarily involve any value judgements such as, (negative) “It is too nasty to do much outside” or, (positive) “It will be good for the gardens.” Instead, it might simply mean, “Where the ^%&@ did I leave my umbrella?!”
No. I’m very good at not remembering details that don’t interest me. I’m sure I’ve seen lots of open and closed windows in nearby houses. I have absolutely no recollection of which houses had which, and it’s entirely possible I’ve seen closed windows on the same house every time I pass it, and I just have never taken any note of that.
I did notice the house that soaped over the windows on their garage, because that seemed weird. But open or closed drapes? Even if I could tell by looking in the windows (and with older, more reflective windows, during the day, it’s often not obvious whether there are drapes covering it or not) I simply have never taken note of that.
I live in a neighborhood of three bedroom, two bath tract homes with small front yards that are fairly close together. I have lived here since 1993 and have walked through the neighborhood thousands of times. I notice if a house is for sale if there is a sign out front and I notice if there are renovations going on outside the home and watch the day to day progress but I have never noticed if someone’s window covering are opened or closed ever let alone kept track of them and if I did I wouldn’t think anything of them being closed all of the time.
I’ll pay more attention on my next walk.
However, there have been those in this thread who have said things like, It means it’s “often a sign of a drug house”. Which, maybe calling something a drug house is a neutral observation like “It is raining”, but I kinda doubt it.
Exactly. I could probably tell you what kind of dog most of my neighbors have, and how often they have it outside in the fence, or tied up to a stake. I could tell you which of my neighbors needs to repair their driveway (up until recently, I had one of the top ten worst driveways, now it’s the best), or who was having weed issues in their yard.
But even having taking walks in my neighborhood after reading this thread, I still couldn’t tell you who seems to keep their windows covered, only those who I wish would.
Oh yeah, when I was getting pavers I did pay close attention to driveways to get ideas and even took a couple of pictures. Now I ignore them again.
As to property values, as renters, why would they care about that? (you mentioned they live in the other half your your duplex, so I assume they’re renters).
As to the real reason… honestly, I don’t know. People can be really, really, REALLY weird about imposing their ideals on others regarding the exterior of the house. I suspect that nobody’s asking them if the home is for rent. I suspect that they are more comfortable with the house looking like someone’s coming and going (for security reasons), or maybe it’s for their own comfort of knowing when you’re home. Either way, they’re not really entitled to that.
Me personally? I would put up a sign on my door that says “no solicitation”. Then, the next time the neighbor gets irritated by a rental inquiry, I would say “the soliciting around here is terrible, isn’t it? That’s why I put up that sign. You should put up one of your own.” And let that be the end of it.
Those people are not making a neutral observation. But I’m going to use another example. Down the block from me are two houses with a shared driveway. One half ( the part owned by one house) of the driveway is blocked with flowerpots etc, so that the driveway cannot be used to access the garages in the backyard. Someone has put a metal fence with a no parking sign in the street in front of the curb cut.
I have no idea why the driveway is partially blocked, and I don’t care. Neither do I care why they have the sign on the street and I am not making any judgments about either. But I notice and remember and could describe to you exactly which house it is- because it is unusual. I couldn’t tell you exactly which houses on my block have curtains or shades or blinds - but I can tell you about the one house that has nothing whatsoever in their second floor windows and the one that kept the shades open all the time in the first floor living room so that I could watch their giant TV from my house across the street. Again, because on my block, it’s unusual to have nothing in the window and to have the living room facing the street rather than a interior or exterior porch.
I once read a book on Francis Beaufort - (developer of the wind scale.). That was about as influential on me as any other book. Beaufort developed his scale as a result of observing what was around him. I recall one portion, where he asked a class to estimate the length of the lunar cycle. They started calculating the size/speed/distance of the earth, moon, etc. Beaufort admonished them that such calculations should be unnecessary, since most of them had had the ability to see the moon with their own eyes nearly every day of their lives.
Combined with my sense of the futility of trying to figure out most social or other “larger” issues or issues, I derive great enjoyment and satisfaction from seeing what I can KNOW about the things I personally experience most frequently. So I study up on and observe the birds, insects, wildlife I see around me, plants, soils, architecture, etc. That personal quirk of mine may make me more “observant” of such minutiae as who constantly keeps their drapes closed. And my personal approach does not necessarily involve making value judgement about what I observed.
Sorry for taking this thread so far afield reflecting my personal peculiarities.
No. Each party owns half of the building. It’s sometimes called joint tenants in common, I believe. Oftentimes people will own the whole thing and rent half of it but not always.
Why would you think they were renters? They own their side, and I own mine.
I dunno, dude. plants, soils, and architecture all interest me. I always notice on long drives when the soil changes, for instance. Whether my neighbor’s windowshades are open or closed is something I have absolutely zero interest in, so I don’t notice it.
I do know the length of the lunar cycle, however, and I’m a little surprised that most of his class didn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish, and a lot of our holidays are either on the new moon or the full moon.