I was at a client’s recently when I happened upon a drawer of horrors. Filled with stacks of papers and other miscellaneous knick knacks, the drawer was not Living Simply. When I inquired what it was all about, she confessed that it had become her hurry-up-and-shove-it-away-because-guests-are-en-route-place.

It was clear to both of us that the contents of said drawer required our immediate attention; there’s nothing so clarifying as the embarrassment that arises from the state of your possessions being viewed by others.

With that in mind, let’s play a little game:

– Guests just rang you up, informing you that they would be launching a surprise visit in T-10 minutes. You hang up the phone, and your mind immediately turns to the ________. Not wanting to guests to see it in its current state, you rush over, stash it in a drawer/shove it in a closet/ hang it up/ throw it away before your guests arrive to see.

– Guests show up at your doorstep entirely unannounced. After the fleeting fantasy of slamming the door in their faces subsides, you shift to mentally berating them for the rudeness of a lack of head’s up. You invite them in with a forced smile that says “entertaining you was all I wanted to do!” You can’t turn them away after all, you are a decent human being, and so you usher them into the ______.

They begin to rattle on about their recent trip to_______, the party they attended at _______ and their long standing ______. Except you can’t focus on or follow a single thread of conversation, so distracted are you with the state of your ________. Hearing laughter, you laugh as well, all the while thinking to yourself “I really wish I had/ didn’t have that ________. This is so embarrassing, they’re going to think I’m a total_______.”

Whatever you filled those blanks in with? That’s your new target. Get cracking. Bonus points if you leave a comment telling us what your answers were.