Bathtubs: The Newer, Better Under-the-Bed

Gone are the days of stuffing your messy belongings under the bed. 

In those harrowing 5 minutes before guests arrive, stashing and storing your various unsightly belongings can cause real panic. When the carpet is hidden from view but you need a quick clean-up, where are today's humans going to stash their stuff? According to a recent study by the Institute for #Adulting, your bathtub is actually an excellent place to throw your mess when you don't have time to clean. 

Not only are your guests unlikely to be searching your shower stall; you will also find that more nosey visitors (i.e. your mother) usually fail to check such a location. Under the bed has become too common a hiding place; not to mention, their is far greater risk of stray items peaking out from underneath a bed. One great advantage of the shower is it's high edges which prevent items from "escaping" into parental view (and keeping mom from finding out how truly messy your house was just before she arrived.) The bathtub is a new, more sophisticated mechanism.

And this trend truly is a contemporary phenomenon. Recent research reveals that, once again, the millennial generation prefers innovation, abandoning old traditions for the new and more efficient. New statistics show that 100%* of adults over the age of 70 prefer stuffing unsightly items under their beds, whereas 100%** of millennials report using their bathtub as a clandestine stuffing compartment (Institute for #Adulting, 2016).

"All you have to do is pull the shower curtain closed," says one recent college graduate, "and then the rest of my apartment looks fabulous!" 

When we asked if this ever inhibited her ability to actually shower, she didn't hesitate to respond, "That's actually the beauty of putting your stuff in your bathtub--when I used to find other hiding places, I'd forget my stuff was there and lose it. Now, I'm forced to deal with it in a more timely fashion...either that, or not shower for several days." 

Aspiring developmental psychologist L.G. Turkelson says that the need to "speed clean" is actually a very primal behavior that has it's roots in early childhood: "Children learn very early on that cleaning one's room is a difficult, time-consuming task. The natural response to such tasks is to try and make them easier by rapidly accumulating items into hidden spaces, or accelerated cache-ing. However, most parents are quick to discover and discourage such behaviors, causing the young child to learn various adaptation skills aimed at continuing cache-ing behaviors undetected." 

It's difficult to tell how this new method of speed cleaning will affect the bathroom appliance industry, but new home-buyers be aware: you may want to look for bigger bathtubs.

*sample size: 1 grandmother

**sample size: 1 millenial