What to change
What a household can change
Most of the obvious rearrangements were tried during the fortnight and recorded. Three worked, several moved the problem, and one thing helped more than any change of furniture.
Living roomThe room most often rearranged, and the one that resisted it
19 m²
Sitting
SittingPaid workCallsTelevisionCompany
11
Kitchen and dinerWhere the one change that worked was made
16 m²
Cooking and eating
CookingEatingPaid workLaundry and adminCallsCompany
14.5
Paid workDomestic workRest and sleepContact and care
Two rooms covering 35 square metres, built for two things. Between them they now carry eleven uses. Two of the two carry more than one, and kitchen and diner carries six. The median room is in use 12.75 of the 16 waking hours. The two rooms in which every attempted rearrangement happened.
What was tried, and what each one did
Six changes were attempted during the fortnight. Three worked, two moved the problem elsewhere, and one cost more than it saved.
The folding table
A narrow table against a living room wall removed five collisions, two of which nobody predicted. It is the best return in the record and it has a limit.
Moving the exercise
Half a minute of furniture-moving removed four collisions. It was available because one of the kitchen's six uses had a reason that had stopped being true.
The alternation that failed
Sharing the quiet room on alternate days worked and was abandoned after three. What has to move is not the person.
The question before a use moves in
Rooms acquire uses by a comparison between rooms and never by a comparison between uses. One question at the right moment supplies the missing comparison.
Counting your own fortnight
The log behind this site took about twenty minutes a day. The shortest version that produces the same finding takes three days and one column.
What to say to the other person
Two sentences that produced the only concrete change in this record, and the vocabulary that reliably produces nothing.
The one-page version
Everything on this site, compressed to what somebody with two jobs in a small flat could use this week.