Moving house involves more than just carrying the items to the truck and putting them on the floor. We become embattled with a three dimensional version of tetris, only the shapes are set by the furniture our customer owns, and the spaces that become available (luckily we set the order though). Often the residents of Adelaide will ask us “how is it that when you are moving all of that furniture, that you remember so well all of the items and the shapes?” People seem genuinely impressed when we come out time and time again with just the right piece to fit the next stage of the intricate puzzle we are putting together.
Perhaps they would be more impressed if they had read the study recently conducted at a Notre Dame University in the United States. (Read about the study here) Have you ever found yourself walk into a room and then immediately forget why it was that you went into the room to begin with? A team headed up by the researcher Gabriel Radvansky sought out to get some clarity on this well-known phenomenon.
The research found that when a test subject walked through a door frame it adversely affected their ability to remember data. In this situation they selected an item at random from a group of sixty items on a table, placed it within a shoe box (so they couldn’t see it any more) and then were requested to walk through the doorway into the next room, as well as also being asked to walk the same distance but within the same room. The scientists conclusively found that the moment a person walks through a door frame their ability to remember information is negatively affected.
Removalists navigate 1000’s of doorways every single day
With this in mind, their ability to recall exactly what furniture is within the house becomes even more impressive! Often we may walk through five or six doorways just to navigate through the house and make it back to the truck. Even with scientifically verified evidence stating that removalists have good reason to be a little forgetful about some things.
I can’t help but ask whether walking backwards (as we so often find ourselves) through a doorway actually increases our memory!
