Yesterday I said I would pick up the room after finishing the newspaper. And then I thought how funny that expression might sound to someone unaccustomed to speaking English. 'Picking up a room' would be immediately unstandable to English-speaking people, even if they happened to use other expressions such as 'ready the room.' [As a child visiting a young friend's Swedish English-speaking family, I thought 'ready the room' sounded quaint.] People accustomed to speaking English could easily make the transfer from the ludicrousness of actually picking up a room to other uses of 'to pick,' such as 'to picking something up' without blinking an eye and could, therefore, easily understand that you hadn't meant to literally pick up a room.

And all this speculation over yesterday's morning paper made me wonder about other expressions for setting a room in order--and whether you might have some local expressions that would present difficulty in interpreting for those who don't speak English fluently.

Belmarduk: I went ahead and started a new thread on this topc although your own on Miscellany about the your dictionary/not mine is closely related. I just didn't want to hijack your thread with a focus on picking up rooms, which interests me since it is a task I have mastered procrastinating.