Sorta. A relatively inexpensive Ikea cabinet for our nice dishes. That’s about it. Not one of those hulking wall-sized oak monstrosities full of “collectibles” that were popular many decades ago.

Lol fuck no

No. Closest thing we have is a Germany Cabinet, as we bought a large set from a German manufacturer last year. It’s more high end than our everyday stuff, and mostly use it when we have people over and birthdays and stuff.

When I hear “China Cabinet” I think of somewhere easily visible and with glass doors so that they’re also on display when not in use. Ours ate hidden in the back along with other stuff we don’t use all that often.

I built one for my parents last summer.

I do have one myself, inherited from my grandmother, full of the dishes that are too precious to break out for Pope God The First because he’s not holy enough for early 20th century China my father “remembers from when he was a kid.” It’s not as large as the one I built for my folks though.

I do…kind of hate them as a trophy case of consumerism?

I have a display cabinet! It has Lego in it. I don’t have fancy China.

Imagine having so much disposable income you have dishes that you use twice a year, otherwise just on display in its own cubby, taking up space and for what. Yes this is 100% a fuckin boomer thing, and we will see more and more of the sets and the cabinets in second hand shops worldwide as they continue to finally die off.

You call it China cabinet, I call it booze box.

Have no fancy plates, that shit is obsolete.

If I were going to host a fancy dinner, I would go to a restaurant.

Wtf good is China that you have to spend hours hand washing? I don’t have servants and I don’t have a dining room either. I mean I did, but I put a stereo in there instead. We used the dining room 3x a year. I listen to records every day.

Priorities.

My parents (Gen x) have one that they got from my boomer grandma passing. They have a billion different sets of china they’re trying to sell or auction, but no one wants it. They’ve told me it’ll be mine when they pass and ugh. I appreciate that it’s nice and all, but truly I’ll probably just donate it to a rage room or something. A soup kitchen so they can all feel sophisticated. Dunno. I don’t want it.

Having fancy china/dish sets for display isn’t really a thing the youth is worried about. It used be a social thing, having guests over to eat off (or just see the display) your fancy dinner plate is probably the social equivalent to having the box of 64GB of ram on a shelf above your computer. In other words “yes, we have money and you can shut about it up Aunt Gertrude”

A closed cabinet with glass doors to display what ever you collect is a nice thing to have. The doors help keep dust and cats out.

Nope. I think it’s mostly a dead idea.

My mom is still hoarding (for me) a set of fine china dishes I inherited from my grandmother. They’re really nice.

But what am I going to do with them? Add specific furniture to my too-small home to store them so I can pull them out for certain dinner parties? We barely host for dinner anymore, and when we do, we keep it casual.

I think china cabinets go along with a whole bunch of social niceties that were important in the 20th century and have since withered.

I inherited most of my grandma’s mid-century dining room set, so yes. I keep her china in the bottom, and use the top as a display case and liquor cabinet. She wouldn’t exactly be thrilled with my setup, but she’d be happy the furniture stayed in the family.

(Speaking as an early Millennial)

I have a gigantic cabinet in my dining room/kitchen (not much wall between them so it’s kinda the same space). It’s 8 feet tall, solid hardwood except for the glass doors, and was originally a built-in from a house in the next neighborhood over. They put it out on the curb and I saw it, hitched up my utility trailer, brought it home and installed it. Best curb find so far.

I use it as a pantry because my house small and doesn’t have a closet-style pantry.

I also have a set of fine china that a friend gave me as a wedding present (even though we didn’t have a gift registry), but the pattern isn’t really our style and I’ve never taken it out of the box. I don’t have plans to buy other fancy dishes, either. I’m very happy with my cheap Corelle (except for the fact that they discontinued the pattern and I wish I had more sets of it).

So, technically, I “have” both china and a china cabinet, but it is very much just a Boomer thing anyway.

I guess I had one or something like it when I first moved out. My parents gave it to me along with a matching dining table, all of which had been sitting in their basement. My wife wasn’t a fan of it and when we moved out of the house we listed it for sale, eventually selling it for a few hundred dollars, after sitting on the market for close to 2 months and dropping the price a few times.

My parents were upset when they found out; it turned out they had had that table custom made earlier in their marriage when they could finally afford new furniture. They said they would’ve bought it back for more than we got had they known. But a couple days later they begrudgingly realized they didn’t have room for that furniture and it wouldn’t have made sense for them to buy it.

A few years later they moved into a smaller home since all of us kids had been grown and moved out for years. As they tried to sell furniture and other things they weren’t going to have room for, it became depressing to them to see how little these things were worth that they had spent a lot of money on new. They had a set of china for each of us kids, one they bought or received as a wedding gift, others they had inherited from dead relatives. But it became apparent that we all preferred the same set, the one with the simplest design, yet it also was clear that we would only rarely, if ever, use the china and it’s largely a waste of space for any of us.

I think we might even have our set already, but we never use it and it’s not on display. If we have it it’s in the bottom cabinets of a console my wife loves. Also there are a couple very nice crystal bowls my uncle bought us, that my wife is almost terrified to get out of their box out of fear of breaking them. We understand they’re all nice items and expensive, but we might’ve preferred to have that money spent on things we’d get more use out of.

I don’t know about the cabinets, but you can find used China really cheap at thrift stores. Most people don’t care about it anymore, so it isn’t worth much. As the boomers are dying their stuff is getting donated.

I personally don’t care about fancy dishes, but a lot of folks like to use it ‘just because’ rather than waiting for a special day.

Puling out the fine china for a gathering used to be a big deal. Nowadays, gatherings are less common, the cachet of owning a set of fine china is less, and when we do gather, many probably use paper plates and the like for easier cleanup.

The act of cooking for guests is considered sufficient effort, I think. And we typically value other posessions more - may I even suggest that most people already have too much stuff, so instead of a sparse house and tales of people holding on to string from packages and that string proving valuable (a tale I remember reading in a childhood schoolbook), today we have too much stuff.