An Experiment with Clutter
ByThe other day my wife grandmother and I conducted an experiment with clutter. As I’ve mentioned in past blog posts, we are selling our home and thus living in staged home. Our dining room has a very simple look to it. There is an old antique table with 4 chairs. Two more chairs from the set are in opposite corners and a small shelf with two decorations rounds out the room. The room has one large picture and a mirror on the walls. The object in questions was a fake flower vase. I asked my wife and grandmother to walk into the room and look at the room. The first time they both came in and focused on the vase. It has a few loud colors like pink and red and sprawls out over the vase in the middle of the table. My job was to sit and watch their eyes unbeknownst to them. The first trip neither one of their eyes could get past the flower arrangement. They looked at it, then away, then back at it.
Now I mixed it up on them. I asked them to leave the room and this time I removed the flower vase. This time it was a different story. Both of their eyes looked at the table, then scanned the walls and up and down from floor to ceiling. They looked all around the room. When the flower vase was present their eyes could not get away from it. It was blocking their view of the room and they didn’t even realize it.
Neither did I really. This wasn’t our idea. Our realtor Shawn Hogle always moves the vase when we have an open house. Now I knew why.
Try this sometime. It will make you think twice about cluttering up a room.
