Closets and Wardrobes

[Carol]

Potioncat wrote:
<snip> 
> While we don't have dressers in kitchens, we do have them in 
bedrooms. In fact, I don't ever hear chest of drawers anymore. I'm 
not sure what the difference is between a dresser, a chest of drawers
and a bureau, but I'm not especially domestic. 

Carol:
I was curious, too, so I looked it up at Merriam-Webster Online.
Apparently, "chest of drawers" is the general term for a piece of
furniture with drawers used to store clothes in a bedroom. A "bureau"
is "a low chest of drawers" and a dresser is "a chest of drawers or
bureau with a mirror." I would say "dresser" for all of them. M-W
Online also stated that "bureau" is used in British English for a
writing desk with a slanted top. Geoff can tell us whether that's
current usage or "old hat."

Potioncat: 
> We had a Bureau of Medicine in the U.S Navy, but it had nothing to
do with storing medications. ,snip>

Carol:
Which reminds me of a childhood anecdote. I was about seven or eight
and encountered the word "bureau" in a novel I was reading, so I asked
my mother what "burroo" meant. She didn't know what I was talking
about and asked to see the page, and then she said it was "bureau" and
meant "dresser." I indignantly responded that it couldn't be
pronounced "byuroh" because a bureau was a group of important people
like the weather bureau!

> > Geoff:
> > Off at a tangent, I have been amused several times recently when
reading material from across the "pond" to find references to the
"parlour" being made. This, to English eyes, is very Victorian and
labels its user as being incredibly old-fashioned.
> 
> Potioncat:
> It is here as well. More modern would be the living room. The family
was often banned from going there because it was for company. I don't
think houses have them any more. (Living rooms, not company.)

Carol:
Maybe it's regional. My apartment has a living room but not a family
room. I've seen houses with both, in which case the living room is the
front room where company is entertained and the family room is further
back (and generally noisier and messier because it's for family, not
company.) I never lived in a house with a family room until my parents
built an addition to their house, a comfortable little room with a
fireplace, which was enough in itself to draw us there in wintertime.
(Flagstaff gets cold!) For awhile in the seventies, I also had a house
with both a family room and a living room (I wish I still had it) with
a living room in the front where we kept our stereo and a family room
in the back, which had a fireplace and arcadia doors opening onto the
patio. That was where we kept the TV. Two guesses which room was used
more often.

Carol, missing that house, with its trees and lawns, and wishing she
could turn back time