What to do about your Achilles room
Pop Quiz! It’s 5:49 and you have 11 minutes before your mother-in-law arrives. Do you:
•Take a quick tour of the living room, plucking errant toys from the floor and putting them somewhere, anywhere – as long as they’re out of sight.
•Try to tackle that confounding, roving pile of bills, magazines, catalogs, and newspapers in the kitchen.
•Race to close the door to any offending room – you can keep mom to the one room that is neat enough for company.
All of the Above!
Whether it’s your living room, kitchen or home office, everybody has a room (or two) in their home that makes them feel less than adequately pulled together. It’s the one you instinctively rush to whip into shape when you have company coming. The room differs from household to household and the degree to which messiness is tolerated can be quite varied as well, but … we all have that room. It’s our organizational Achilles heel.
Sarah on ‘The Impact’
That stack of ‘stuff’ lurking in the corner, spread out across the table, or even collecting dust in an overstuffed box in the corner takes an emotional toll. Psychological researchers have found that a constant barrage of physical and informational clutter leads to higher levels of cardiovascular stress, impaired judgment and a noticeable drop in civility to others. We’ve heard hundreds of women across American confirm that finding. An out of control room can really make you feel anxious and stressed out.
Three Tips to Protect Your Achilles Room
•1: Trash, Return & House: Get three large garbage bags or boxes and label them ‘Trash’, ‘Some Place Else’ and ‘Stays.’ Go through your room item by item and place everything that is in view (e.g. on shelves, counters, sofas, chairs, or on the floor) in one of the three boxes. As soon as you’re done, throw out the one labeled Trash and remove the one labeled ‘Some Place Else’ from the room. Come back to these items once you have finished organizing the ‘Stays’ that actually belong in the room you’re in and return them to their proper homes.
•2: Give Everything a Home: Repeat after us … everything needs a home. It is so simple, but nothing creates more of a mess than objects that do not have a regular place to go. Think about the space vertically as well as horizontally. Put the items you rarely need access to up high and the things you use often at eye level. Don’t forget to have enough trash cans on hand to make it easy to throw out unnecessary items immediately.
•3: Commercially Clean: Once a week when the family is all together watching TV, take the time during commercial breaks to tidy up the problem room. You will be amazed what a few people can accomplish in just two minutes. In the course of an hour, your Achilles room will be all together and buttoned up.