Why Every Southern Home Has a Room No One’s Allowed in

Unlocking the curious case of plastic-covered couches, unused china, and Southern hospitality’s strangest tradition

Natalie C. Frank, Ph.D July 27, 2025

Mr.TinMD/flickr [CC BY 2.0]

There’s a room in every Southern home that you don’t go into. You know the one. It’s the place where sunlight hits just right, there’s not a speck of dust anywhere, the carpet is always just vacuumed with the lines all going the right way, and a couch, perhaps immaculately wrapped in enough plastic to mummify a mid-sized dog, sits undisturbed like a monument to hospitality that never quite happens. We call it different things, the “good room,” the sitting room, the parlor or in my family it was called the living room. But make no mistake: that room isn’t for sittin’ and it isn’t for livin’ in. It’s for lookin’ at.

I grew up thinking the queen herself might drop by any moment, and that was the only context in which I’d ever be allowed to enter that room. It’s where you’re supposed to take only honored guests when they stop by unexpectedly, or those who were to be interrogated, my dates for example. Where the bridal shower is held (though punch is poured in the kitchen an carried out by someone trusted) and where the family portraits go to die. It’s a sacred space, not in a religious sense, but in a “don’t you dare mess up the vacuum lines” kind of way.

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