I’m Pretty Sure My House Stinks

I consider myself a relative clean, neat, and tidy person. But I’m pretty sure my house stinks, even though I can’t smell it. You see, I have two dogs. We live near the beach where we often take our outings, and winters here are very wet. That’s what leads me to conclude that my house probably smells like wet dogs at least part of the time. I’m sure it’s very noticeable to visitors. And therein lies the issue – “habitualization”. The brain’s ability to stop paying attention to certain things.

Habitualization is a fundamental neurological process vital to our evolution, helping us to quickly adapt to our environments so we are ready for the stuff that is new and potentially beneficial, or the hazards that may be threatening writes Alison Flood in New Scientist. In that article Ms. Flood interviews Tali Sharot, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, about her book Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. Sharot calls this process of noticing dishabituating. In the interview Sharot explains The brain cares about what is new, rather than what has always been there. It makes evolutionary sense to stop responding to things that have always been there or that are changing very gradually, so you can be ready for the next thing that is coming.

You can dishabituate yourself by taking yourself out of an environment, because when you come back, you’re going to see it with fresh eyes.

My first formal experience with Fresh Eyes was in 2017 when I was with a group of resort General Managers that split up and visited our colleagues’ resorts for a Fresh Eye exercise. We walked in and around the common areas of the resort with the eyes of an owner or guest, most of us having never visited that resort before. We took notes on things we saw that were out of place, overlooked, or just neglected. Then we reported out. Many observations were minor, such as a cord hanging down from the back of the TV monitor in the exercise room, handprints on the entry door, or the cluttered counter behind the front desk. Taken together these smaller items added up and honestly, if corrected, could take the resort from a 7 or 8 in appearance and ambience, to a 9 or 10. Most items were easily corrected but would also need to be added to a list of regular maintenance or housekeeping tasks. Several of the resort GMs were a bit defensive about the things we noted in the Fresh Eyes exercise, but soon came around to the value of the effort.

As a resort General Manager myself I often asked my colleagues to pay me a visit with their Fresh Eyes and write up their findings. I also asked owners and guests. I knew that as well as I thought the resort looked, there were things that I just couldn’t see because I was habituated. I welcomed the feedback because it helped me run an even betterresort for our owners and guests. That’s the value of Fresh Eyes. Often is the cumulative effect of smaller items that can add to or detract from the owner and guest experience. This is even more important with the increased number of rental and exchange guests who are visiting the resort for the first time. Try a Fresh Eyes exercise from Resort Advisors and you’ll hear this phrase repeated, as I have, This place just feels good, from the moment I walk in the door.

And – I’ve found after a long, wet winter where I live, opening the windows, some spring cleaning, and and a spritz of Fabreze contain that warm, fuzzy dog smell!

Flood, Alison. How to See Things in A New Light NewScientist. 27 February 2024.

Sharot, Tali and Sunstein, Cass R. Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. Atria/One Signal Publishers (February 27, 2024).