150 House Vocabulary Words Expand your English vocabulary
Hi.
I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Are you ready to expand your vocabulary?
Let’s get started.
Do you want to improve your vocabulary?
Do you want to have fun?
Do you want to see my house?
If you answered yes, yes, and yes, then today
you’re in luck because I want to help you
understand and use over 40 essential household
words, expressions, and phrasal verbs.
We’re gonna go around to each of the rooms
in my house and I’m gonna show you wants there
and maybe what’s not there but what maybe
is typically there in other American households
so that you can use those words.
Because in a video that I recently made called
How To Learn English At Home, I mentioned
that you can look around you and ask questions
about your surroundings.
“What’s that?
What’s in that box?
Who is that?”
Well, the way that you can do this is if you
have the vocabulary to explain those things.
So I hope that today you’ll be able to expand
your vocabulary even if you are an advanced
English speaker, I’m sure that you’re going
to use some useful expressions and you’ll
realize this is what native speakers really
use in real life instead of what they use
in textbooks.
So I challenge you, after this lesson, try
to go around your house and name things.
You could even write down a label and put
it around if your family members don’t mind.
This is a great way to expand your vocabulary.
So pay attention, make some notes, and let’s
get started.
Welcome to my kitchen.
I’m gonna just go around the room, and in
fact, I’m gonna go around the kitchen, the
living room, the office, the bathroom, and
the bedroom.
And we’re gonna go step-by-step through the
different things that I see.
I’m gonna name them.
If they need any explanation, I’ll try to
explain them.
And I hope that it will be helpful to you
as you expand your vocabulary.
All right.
Let’s start with the fridge.
Here’s the fridge, or you can say refrigerator
if you want to be extra intense.
But we often just say fridge, pretty simple.
On the top, you have the freezer.
And my freezer’s on top, sometimes freezers
are on the bottom, or sometimes it’s split
down the middle and there’s a freezer on one
side and a refrigerator, or fridge, on the
other side.
Mine’s just on the bottom.
You can see I have a lot of magnets and pictures
on my fridge.
It’s pretty typically.
I have some magnets that some YouTube subscribers
sent me, some pictures, some magnets that
we’ve picked up as we’ve traveled.
But this is pretty typical that you’ll see,
some personal mementos on the fridge.
Here, we have our dining room table.
In the U.S., typically people will have a
dining room or maybe their kitchen will be
a little bit bigger than mine because we live
in an apartment.
It’s from the 1920s, so actually my apartment
and my house is quite different than what
you would typically see if you visited someone’s
house in the U.S. but a lot of the items are
the same.
So if there’s any differences from typical
houses in the U.S., I’ll try to explain that
to you as well.
But here, we have the table.
Pretty simple.
I bet you learned that in your, maybe, first
class in English class.
We have chairs, we usually call these kitchen
chairs or if you have a separate dining room,
you can call them dining room chairs.
Because we have a one-year-old, you’re gonna
see a lot of different items around our house
that are for our one-year-old.
So here, we have his highchair.
His high chair attaches to the kitchen chair
so it’s a little bit different than a standalone
highchair, that would be just a separate chair.
But we don’t have much room in our kitchen,
so we have a portable highchair that attaches
to a chair.
Next, let’s move on to this table which is
where we cut things and prepare our food.
Here, you can see a fruit tray, you might
call it different things depending on what
region of the U.S. you’re from.
At the moment, we only have two tangerines
on the fruit tray.
Typically, we have more.
But we also have a coaster.
This is where you put your cups or your mugs,
usually hot or cold things to keep the table
safe.
We also have a coffee grinder for grinding
beans.
And a sippy cup for our baby.
And let’s move along over here.
On this side, we have our cheese grater.
This is with a T, even though it sounds like
a D. Grater, it’s a cheese grater.
Our knives.
We have some measuring cups in the U.S., we
use cups and tablespoons, and teaspoons to
measure things.
A lot of people have these in plastic, but
ours are cute little cats.
And here, we have some condiments that we
often use when we’re cooking, so we have them
close by and handy.
Oh, we just have honey, some balsamic, some
chopsticks, some salt, some olive oil, and
of course, you can see my plants, which are
not doing too well.
I don’t have a green thumb, as they say.
Our plants often die.
So they don’t have a good future looking ahead
of them.
This is our oven where we cook and bake things.
Typically, we call the top the stove top or
the stove.
And there’s four burners on this stove top.
And we have some knobs for turning on the
stove.
Inside is the oven.
Often, I’ll just say the oven to mean the
full stove, or this full device.
But you can kind of use them interchangeably.
Some people are sticklers about that kind
of thing.
Sticklers means picky, picky about those kind
of terms.
But, we often say oven, stove for this general
device.
But technically, the top is the stove and
inside is the oven.
I have some pots and pans here.
There’s more under the counter.
Here, I have my glass lid because inside I’m
making some butternut squash for lunch a little
bit later.
And my cutting board, I have a couple other
cutting boards, but this one is my favorite,
so it stays close by and handy.
On this side of the kitchen are the oven mitts
and our spice rack.
Typically, people will say spice rack or spice
cabinet is their inside a cabinet.
We have, technically, it’s a shelf, but we
call it the spice rack because all of the
spices are there.
I also have some tea and some cookbooks and
some miscellaneous things on that shelf as
well.
So this is something that’s pretty different
from typical houses in the U.S., we have a
sink, most places have a sink with a facet,
we have the strainer, or colander, usually
a strainer for straining pasta or other things
that we’re washing.
But, we didn’t have a dishwasher until about
one month ago and it’s because this is an
old apartment, as I mentioned it’s from the
1920s, so there’s not air conditioning, not
regular heating, no dishwasher, no washer
or dryer for our clothes.
But we decided to buy a, you can see here,
table top dishwasher.
This is not typical in houses in the U.S.,
but it’s the same idea.
Typically, they’re under the counter and it’s
kind of part of the furniture.
But you can open the dishwasher and see the
dish rack.
Here, we have some clean dishes and apparently
toys that needed to be cleaned too.
So we have the dosh rack and you put your
dishes in the dish rack.
And up here, I have a small dish rack just
for more fragile things like these mugs or
these glasses.
But you can hand dry things and put them in
the rack as well.
So, that’s just depending on what you have
in your house.
If you have a dishwasher, or if you need to
hand wash things and then put them in the
drying rack or in the rack.
Above the dishwasher, we have a cabinet where
we keep put dry goods.
So you can see we have some spices, some popcorn,
things for baking, there’s some pasta, some
kind of leftover, dry goods that we put in
there to keep.
A lot of people will have what you call a
pantry.
And a pantry is kind of like a closet where
you keep dry goods, but our apartment is pretty
small, it’s old, we don’t have a pantry.
So, we just have a cabinet.
Beside the dishwasher, we have a toaster oven.
And a lot of people will also have a microwave.
In fact, I’d say 99% of Americans have a microwave.
We just don’t have it because we don’t have
a lot of space, this is an old apartment,
like I mentioned.
So there’s a couple key elements.
There’s one more key element that you’ll not
see in our house that I’ll mention a little
bit later.
But, we have a toaster oven, a lot of people
will have a regular toaster and it will just
have slots.
So, we call this the toaster because it’s
the only one we have.
But if you have a toaster with slots and a
toaster oven, you probably need to be a little
more specific and just say, “Put it in the
toaster oven,” or, “I put it in the toaster
oven,” just so people know which one it’s
in.
We have a paper towel rack, this is the paper
towel rack, the metal piece.
And here are some paper towels for cleaning
up things.
And we also have a water kettle, a hot water
kettle for heating up water.
So this is kind of like our little drink station.
I have tea things, Dan has some coffee things,
we have some dish washing soap.
This is where all of those kind of extra kitchen
things happen.
And finally, it’s a little bit awkward for
me to show you with the camera because it’s
a little bit high up so I have to hold the
camera myself, but here we have our dishes.
So we have big plates, little plates, you
might come across some specific words for
different sizes of plates.
But in reality, we just say big plates, little
plates.
We have some wine glasses, some regular glasses,
tall glasses, short glasses, and bowls.
A lot of people have different sizes of bowls
or different functions for different bowls.
But, we keep it simple, bowls.
Up on top, as well, we have some mugs you
can see.
We have a lot of mugs because I feel like
choosing the right mug for that moment is
an important part of drinking a hot drink.
I have to have the right mug.
Do I want the mug with birds on it?
Do I want the mug with a rainbow on it?
It just depends.
And it kind of lends the experience, a richer
feeling, I don’t know if you feel the same
way about the mug that you drink your coffee
or your tea out of, but I feel like the mug
is important to me.
All right, let’s go to the next room.
When you first come into our house we have
a shoe rack where we line up our shoes.
And this is typical in some American houses,
but in a lot of American houses, people keep
their shoes on.
For us, we lived in Korea for a couple years,
so we got used to taking off our shoes.
And we have a sign on the door that says,
“Please take off your shoes, we will appreciate
it.”
But, a lot of our friends have never actually
looked at the sign.
And we don’t tell them, “Hey, take off your
shoes.”
We’re pretty relaxed when it comes to guests.
But for ourselves, we always take off our
shoes.
If we need to run into the house for something
quickly, then it’s not a big deal.
But, we have a shoe rack so that we can easily
take off our shoes and put them away when
we come in our house.
Welcome to our living room.
There is one thing I’m gonna mention about
our living room, maybe a couple things, but
specifically one thing that you’re not gonna
see in our living room that’s pretty typical,
and that’s just a TV.
You could say television, but we often just
say TV.
Why don’t we have a TV?
Well, it was a conscious decision to not have
a TV.
First of all, because I’m not a big fan of
different TV shows and it’s just not that
enjoyable for me.
But also, I feel like I don’t wanna just have
it on and always be watching.
Anyway, we can talk about that another time.
But, I want to let you know that it’s pretty
typical to see a TV in American households
in their living room of you could say family
room.
Some people say main room, some people say
den, kind of like a lion’s den.
This is like a cave, but people say den.
I don’t know if that’s a southern word, but
some of my friends in the south say that.
But we call this just the living room or the
main room.
And that’s where we spend a lot of our time.
On this side of the living room, we have a
piano, some shelves for displaying different
things.
You might hear this called knick-knacks.
And that means sometimes sentimental things,
sometimes just junk, but for us, we just try
to keep only things that matter to us.
So we have some sentimental items on our shelves.
And on the piano there’s some picture frames
and another coaster.
You might see as well that we have a lot of
baby gates everywhere in our living room,
it blocks off the full living room.
And that’s because we have a one-year-old,
so it keeps him safe, it keeps us sane, and
maybe for you, if you have a baby you also
have some baby gates.
I highly doubt that you have a tent in your
living room, but if you have a baby, if you
have a kid that likes to play, maybe you have
a tent.
So we just have this tent with all of our
baby’s toys inside and he goes in there and
plays and we play with him in there.
And it’s just part of our living space.
Now, let’s go onto our bookshelf.
Our bookshelf is one of the main items, main
pieces of furniture in our living room.
We have the bookshelf, the couch, and the
piano.
Those are kind of the centerpieces of this
room.
So on our bookshelf, of course, we have books.
They are somewhat organized by topic, not
so much right now because I just tried to
organize them there myself.
But, on the bookshelf, we have some speakers,
we have some other miscellaneous things up
here like our pumpkins that are kind of rotting
and we need to get rid of them.
On the bottom, we have some toys for our baby.
So, the first two shelves are baby things.
And then these shelves, that he can’t reach,
those are for us.
So, we can say this a bookshelf and these
are shelves.
This is where we lounge.
This is the couch, and we call this a coffee
table even though we don’t typically have
coffee on it.
But it usually just means that kind of smallish
table that’s in the middle of your living
room or close to the couch.
You might be surprised that sometimes Americans
put their feet on this, I don’t know if you
do this, but I know in some cultures it’s
seen as extremely gross.
But, you just prop your feet up on the coffee
able and kick back and relax.
But, beside the coffee table, or behind the
coffee table, you can see we have a side table.
I know this expression is really simple and
it’s kind of obvious.
But if you wanted to know which table, you
could just say the side table, or the table
beside the couch.
And on the side table there’s a lamp that
we use to light our reading in the evening.
On this side of our living room, we call this
just our Ikea chair because it came from Ikea,
but you might see people who have comfortable
chairs like this in their living room.
You might see them calling them an easy chair.
Usually an easy chair is a little bit bigger
than this, a little bit more comfortable.
Or you might hear them call it a La-Z-Boy.
They’re not talking about how you’re not studying
and you’re not working hard.
“I’m sitting on the lazy boy,” no.
It just means that when you sit on it, you
feel lazy, you feel comfortable.
So a La-Z-Boy has a foot prop that comes up
so you can completely relax and lay back.
But for us, we just call this our Ikea chair,
it kind of bounces a little bit.
It’s not a rocking chair, it doesn’t completely
go back and forth, but it has a little bit
of movement.
We have here our windowsill.
The windowsill is the place where we can put
seasonal things or just some decorations if
we want.
And the window, here we have the inner window,
it has some kind of maybe more old fashioned,
1920s style panels here.
But, we also have inside our window another
feature, so let’s get a little closer and
take a look.
Most windows in the U.S. have a screen and
that’s on the other side of this main window,
just to prevent mosquitoes and bugs coming
in in the summer time.
But because it’s winter, we also have another
pane, a windowpane that’s down.
It’s the storm window.
So here, you’re only seeing the regular windowpane,
but on the other side, we have a second layer
that’s called a storm window.
And you could out it down in case of a storm,
but typically, it’s used in the wintertime,
usually for older houses because older houses
have two layers of window.
They don’t have maybe some modern technology
for the window structure.
So we have a screen, a storm window, and just
this regular window inside.
Before we leave this room, I just want to
quickly talk about the basics of a room.
We have, of course, the walls and the ceiling.
But here, we have hardwood floors.
We don’t have any carpet in our house and
that’s mainly because it’s an older apartment,
so it has wood.
But also because we have two cats and a baby,
so it’s a little bit difficult to clean carpet.
But, most American houses will have carpets
usually in the bedrooms or if they have an
upstairs area in the upstairs.
But some will have it, as well, in the main
room or in the living room.
I think it’s kind of becoming a more modern
thing to have hardwood floors, kind of going
back to that classic style.
So you might see that, you might have that
in your house if you live in the U.S., but
carpets and rugs, rugs are just removable
small carpets.
Rugs and carpets are pretty typical, but we
just have hardwood floors.
This is not laminate.
In the kitchen, you saw laminate.
Laminate is just kind of like a plastic flooring,
it’s typically in kitchens because it’s easy
to clean.
But here, we have real wood, hardwood floors.
Welcome to our office, drum room, spare bedroom,
a little bit of everything and another dying
plant.
And oh, we have Dan.
Dan is working on editing a vocabulary video
for the Fearless Fluency Club, if you’d like
to learn with us, you can learn with us every
month.
But in this room, we have the office desk.
We have the desktop computer, we have laptops
and whatnot as well, but the desktop is great
for editing videos and having a big screen.
So he’s sitting in an office chair and he
is using some of the office equipment.
How’s it going?
Dan: It’s going well.
Are you getting some inspiration from the
fish?
Dan: Obviously, in their huge ball of algae
over here.
Yup, yup.
Welcome to our bathroom.
We have only one bathroom in our apartment.
A lot of American houses have at least two,
but our apartment is a good size for one bathroom.
Typically, in the U.S. we say bathroom, in
the UK you’re gonna hear people say toilet.
But, in the U.S. we do not say toilet unless
we’re talking about the physical object, the
toilet.
So in the U.S., when you say toilet, you feel
a little bit dirty maybe because you’re imagining
the throne, that chair that you sit on.
So it’s a little bit weird in the U.S. if
you say, “I’m going to go to the toilet.”
We can imagine that piece of furniture.
So, it’s a little bit better to say, “I’m
going to the bathroom.”
We use the term restroom to talk about a public
place.
Some people might even say bathroom for a
public place.
So maybe in a restaurant or maybe in a gas
station, or if you’re driving on a road trip,
there might be a rest stop and you go to the
restroom inside the rest stop.
Those are the most typical expressions that
you’re gonna hear in the U.S., bathroom and
restroom.
But I would not say, “This is the restroom.”
If I said restroom at a friends house, “I’m
gonna go to the restroom,” it’s quite formal
and it seems a little bit weird like I’m trying
to be too formal, when really, I’m just going
to the bathroom and it’s my friends house.
So I recommend using restroom only for maybe
work places situations or for public places
like restaurants or gas stations where you’re
going the bathroom.
It’s gonna be a little bit tricky to film
in here ‘cause the bathroom’s long and narrow,
but we’re gonna make it work.
So here we have the shower.
And we know it’s a shower because we have
a shower curtain.
But in the U.S. you’ll typically find two
shower curtains.
On the outside there’s on that has usually
a nice, pretty color on it.
And then on the inside, you’ll see a shower
curtain liner.
And this is, I’ll try to show you here, this
is on the inside of the bathtub.
And that’s to prevent water from spilling
out.
I know I visited some other countries that
don’t have shower curtains at all, and I found
it quite difficult to take a shower without
getting the whole bathroom wet.
So in the U.S. it’s convenient.
We’ve got a shower curtain and we have a shower
curtain rod up here.
You can see to hold the shower curtain.
Inside the shower, we have a bathtub.
And you can take a bath in here, but most
people don’t take a bath.
Usually just kids take a bath.
It’s kind of small, it’s not so comfortable,
and it’s not really part of American culture
for adults to take a bath.
You might see in some movies maybe a woman
in the bathtub with a glass of wine and there’s
some candles, this is not typical at all.
That hardly ever happens and we just don’t
really soak in the bath.
Some people find it dirty to sit in the bath
water because maybe we don’t clean the bathtubs
as often as countries who take baths.
Here, we have, also, a shower rack.
You can see it’s hanging on the shower head.
The shower head is where the water comes out.
We have the shower head, the shower rack,
and up here we have our shampoo and conditioner
and soap and whatnot.
But we have the shower rack.
Moving on in the bathroom, we have a little
table here with some toiletries on the table.
There’s some lotions or contacts or toothpaste.
These are things that you use to get ready
in the morning or to get ready for bed, they’re
toiletries.
We have a soap dispenser and we have the sink
and a facet.
And it’s pretty typical that you’ll see an
outlet as well in the bathroom.
I know some countries don’t have outlets in
the bathroom.
It can be kind of dangerous to have an outlet
in the bathroom, so of course, just don’t
out your hairdryer in the sink.
Little word of wisdom.
And it wouldn’t be a bathroom without a toilet.
So we have the toilet, we have toilet paper,
and we have the handle for flushing the toilet.
As well as usually two separate lids on the
toilet.
I know some countries don’t have two separate
lids, it’s kind of an all in one combo, but
in the U.S., we have two separate lids and
usually a brush, a toilet brush for cleaning
the toilet.
And a plunger in case you need it.
And don’t forget, some more dying plants just
to round out your full experience of our house.
Oh, I don’t wanna forget, as well, we have
these hand towels.
This hand towel is for drying your hands after
you wash your hands.
And a wash cloth.
This is for washing your face.
Oftentimes, a hand towel will have a little
ring and it will be inside that ring, but
we don’t have that so we just hang it over
the shower curtain rod.
Welcome to my bedroom.
The lighting is a little bit different in
here because we have some extreme blackout
shades and blackout curtains so that we can
sleep and so that our baby can sleep, especially
when he takes a nap during the day.
So you can see here on the window, we have
some black shades and also some black curtains
that is essential and it has helped our lives
so much.
All right, let me show you around.
Of course, the main feature of a bedroom is
the bed.
Here’s our bed and we have a quilt on our
bed.
This is something that Dan’s great grandmother
made, but you’ll often simply see sheets in
the summer time or maybe a thin blanket.
But in the winter, you’ll see a comforter.
This is a thick, fuller type of blanket.
In Europe, a lot of people use a duvet, but
in the U.S., I had actually never heard of
a duvet until I went to Europe.
So it’s not so common in the U.S., maybe I’m
just like in a little isolated bubble of people
who don’t have duvets.
So if you’re in the U.S. let me know if you
have a duvet.
But typically, you’ll see a quilt of a comforter,
or just some sheets.
You’ll see over here is my baby’s crib.
A lot of people in the U.S. who have a child,
they have a separate room for their child.
But, our apartment is small so we make do
with what we have.
And he sleeps here in his crib.
On this side, there is a nightstand.
I have a nightstand as well over on this side.
The nightstand is the table that goes beside
your bed.
And typically there’s a lamp on the nightstand,
maybe there’s a drawer or a shelf and you
can put some books or something in that nightstand
that you use when you’re sleeping.
This is our set of drawers.
You might hear people say dresser drawers.
This, I feel like is a little bit older English,
like maybe my parents of my grandparents might
say dresser drawers.
But for me, I just say a set of drawers or
it’s in the drawer.
This is a difficult word to pronounce, so
I hope that you can say it clearly.
Drawers, drawers.
Inside our closet you’ll see some clothes
that are hanging up.
We hang up the clothes in the closet or you
can say they’re hanging in the closet.
And they’re hanging on what?
They’re hanging on hangers.
A lot of words that have to do with hang that
have to do with the closet.
So the clothes are hanging up in the closet.
Some people also fold their clothes up here,
maybe some winter clothes or some pants that
you don’t wanna hang up.
One quick thing that I’d like to mention that
we don’t have put often typical American houses
will, especially standalone houses, apartments
sometimes have this, sometimes don’t, but
a lot of houses have a master bath.
Or you can say master bathroom.
And that’s a bathroom that’s connected to
the biggest bedroom.
So typically, if you have a household of parents
and two children, the parents bedroom is the
biggest bedroom and attached to the parents
bedroom is the master bath.
In the house that I grew up in, my parents
had this, Dan’s parents had this as well.
But in our apartment, we only have the one
bathroom that I showed you.
So we don’t have a master bath.
It’s just the bathroom of the house.
So you might see this, and if you’re in someone’s
house or if you’re describing a house, or
maybe you’re buying a house or renting on
in the U.S., you might hear that term mentioned,
“There’s a master bath,” or, “There’s a master
bathroom.”
Both of those terms are the same thing, it’s
just a shortened version of bathroom.
Thanks so much for joining me in this rather
long vocabulary video.
I hope that it helped to refresh some words
that you’ve learned in the past and helped
to add to your vocabulary so that you can
go around your house and name and label some
things that you have in your house that you
see every day.
It will help to reinforce those words.
I wanna ask you a question.
What is something that I didn’t mention in
this video that you have in your house?
Let me know in the comments.
What’s an item in your house that I didn’t
mention in this video.
It can help to expand your vocabulary.
I recommend reading other comments so that
you can see things from other peoples houses
that I didn’t mention here.
Just keep growing your vocabulary every day.
Thank you so much for learning English with
me, and I’ll see you again next Friday for
a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
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Thanks so much, bye.