In The Making of Home, historian Judith Flanders traces how domestic life evolved over 500 years—from shared straw beds and dirt floors to the advent of hallways, upholstered furniture, and window curtains. The historian Judith Flanders’s book The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes takes readers on a multi-century journey through the history of housing. “For most, the past was a world where every aspect of life was lived in sight of others, where privacy was . For most of human history, houses have not been private spaces.” An abundance of rooms with distinct purposes is a recent phenomenon. In the 17th century, the Dutch routinely spread sand over their floors, and the British did so into the 18th century.