ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the discussion of the relationship between gender, identity and home through a focus on the senses. It examines theoretically and empirically how people in Spain and England use sensory categories and metaphors to represent their domestic understandings and practices. Both home decoration and housework contribute to how people intentionally create and maintain the visual/visible aspects of home. They also form part of their projects of home and of self-identity and might be understood as expressive statements that conform to or go ‘against the grain’ of different discourses and interpretations of tradition. The textures of home are nevertheless central to the way domestic objects and practices are experienced. While Spanish informants generally regarded dust as something that originated from ‘outside’, in England the author informants understood this layer of grey as something that accumulated from inside the home, and moreover as something of themselves.
