Apparently a dedicated mud room will make you less stressed. But I have a very different approach

I was excited to learn that the latest interiors essential, according to the Washington Post, is a “dirty zone”. I’m ahead of the curve – I’ve already got a dirty zone by each main door (and also one directly outside the back door, where, rudely, a mystery animal has defecated). The fridge drawers are dirty zones thanks to the windfall apples I thought I would cook, but predictably left to liquefy. There’s a dirty zone next to the washing machine and a mildewy one inside it. There’s the festering compost bin I’m too chicken to tackle post-heatwave, plus the cupboard under the stairs, which we don’t talk about. Good luck finding a clean zone, basically.

Does this make me kinda chic? Unfortunately not: the Post is actually preaching the benefits of confining the sordid ephemera of life to carefully delineated and hidden areas: storage benches, monogrammed totes or even a “mud room” (for coats, shoes, skis, lacrosse sticks and dog-washing sinks – I think posh Britons call it a boot room). A 2021 study in the Netherlands found that participants who did chores in chaotic environments had higher levels of the stress marker salivary alpha-amylase. I always wonder what’s brewing in my mouth as I fall over piles of filthy shoes yet again while running to answer the door.

After a burglary, my parents decided we needed extra security. Jerry was the answer – and this hungry, handsome hound helped us all in countless ways

Jerry came into our lives because a burglar had broken in. My mum had woken in the middle of the night to find an intruder in our kitchen. He scarpered, but the psychological damage was done. Two days later, my dad came home with the cutest little rescue puppy, with traces of beagle and labrador in him. He was two months old, had a black, brown and white coat, and big, bashful eyes. We called him Jerry because we had a cat called Tom. “I’m not sure how he’ll protect us,” I said. “He will,” my dad replied.

Jerry was very laid-back and Zen. He became part of the family straight away. He also became the therapy dog we hadn’t realised we needed. With two teenagers in the house (me and my older brother) and a hyperactive younger brother, someone was always in a strop and needing to let off steam by taking him out for a walk. Each time, Jerry obliged. I’d bore him with my latest teen-romance trauma; he was a very good listener. Sometimes, he’d have five walks a day, with both of my parents taking their turn. He certainly got his steps in.

As Russia hits another ammunition warehouse, killing at least 38, locals put blame on poorly placed depots

It is a day and a half since a Russian jet-powered drone smashed into an ammunition dump in Myla, a village 15 miles outside central Kyiv. Volodymyr, 61, a security guard, leads visitors from his family’s badly damaged home, its roof blown off, back windows shattered, through the garden towards the impact site 300 metres away.

The garden, like so many in Ukraine’s villages and suburbs, is a sizeable allotment. But today the greenhouse is shattered, a vegetable patch is blackened and crisp underfoot. Several metres of grapevine have been destroyed. Even so, Volodymyr finds two surviving bunches to hand to the Guardian.

Amelia Dimoldenberg says publicists ignored her interview show for years but she can now be picky over A-list guests

Just a decade ago, Amelia Dimoldenberg found it impossible to drum up any mainstream celebrities to come on her mock date YouTube show, in which she chats awkwardly with guests over chicken and chips.

Even persuading a local actor connected with her London youth club to come on took years of prodding. Managers of A-listers with movies or albums to push instead battled to claim a spot on the hallowed cushions of the primetime TV chatshow sofa.

More than two dozen teenagers stuck in the Spanish territory of Ceuta shared their reasons for joining the treacherous mass crossing in July

For Fatin, one of the teenage girls now living in limbo in a makeshift camp in the Spanish city of Ceuta, the decision to leave her home in Morocco began to form when she had to give up school.

She wanted to continue studying, she says, but at home she was expected to take responsibility for the housework instead. As classes and learning gave way to domestic chores, the future she had imagined for herself began to feel increasingly distant.

Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate

Twenty years ago, Pluto got demoted. After a vote by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in August 2006, Pluto was relegated from major planet to dwarf planet status. Our solar system dropped from nine planets to eight. At the time, many scientists were unhappy with the decision. Two decades on, the debate is, if anything, even more polarised.

“The definition of a planet they created, you can’t use it at all,” says Philip Metzger, the director of the Stephen W Hawking Centre for Microgravity Research and Education at the University of Central Florida. “It makes the definition of a planet completely non-useful in science.”

Workers thought to be stuck in underground areas at 11 sites after last week’s devastating flash floods

Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, hundreds of whom are feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of 11 hydropower projects in Nepal after the devastating flash floods, ​the ⁠country’s disaster ​management authority has said.

The death toll from the ⁠unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ​and debris on Wednesday last week has risen to 903, with 16 more dead reported in Tibet. Nearly 5,000 are missing on the two sides of the border.

Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast is expected to push many Iranians into deeper poverty as food inflation soars

For many Iranians, the new US sanctions campaign, called Operation Economic Outcast, seems superfluous given the grim economic situation in their country.

Iranians are facing runaway food inflation, closed petrol stations and a seemingly never-ending depreciation of the nation’s currency caused by a lack of foreign exchange reserves.

Concern among staff that fragile artwork’s scarce ‘light hours’ given to someone with no known interest in museum

The British Museum privately hosted the Donald Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel in the exhibition space of the Bayeux tapestry earlier this month, the Guardian understands.

The museum’s director of development, Charlotte Appleyard, hosted the PayPal founder at a VIP viewing of the tapestry, which is yet to open to the public, on 18 August.

Tory leader expected to install Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary after sacking Mel Stride and Priti Patel

Kemi Badenoch sacked her shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, and shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, in a sweeping Conservative reshuffle on Monday, replacing Stride with Andrew Griffith, and is expected to install Tom Tugendhat as Patel’s replacement.

Stride, who has been the shadow chancellor since Badenoch became leader, was widely seen among Tories as failing to make an impression at a time when Labour has been under pressure over the economy.