Living In Disaster

There should be a policeman directing traffic inside my house right now. Stuff is everywhere, the house smells like paint, and my three oldest are sharing a bedroom which is just asking for one of them end up with a broken bone (they get rather daring when together). It's starting to feel endless even though it's only been a week. In case you were wondering, we ripped out all our carpet to install the new stuff, which won't be here until NEXT week. Over half of our house is carpeted, so...yeah, lots of messes. Then we decided to paint all the rooms while we were at it. But as I sat grumbling about the idiocy involved in me agreeing to all of these things, and in June/July when the weather has been over 100 degrees since last week, and having open windows is like opening the door to the sauna, I remembered that these are the exact conditions (and far worse) that my character lives in in my WIP and it will only help me to understand her that much more. So, I guess at the end of the day it's not ALL bad. (Silver Lining.) I just wish I could get over having two humongous baskets of laundry in my living room since my kids dressers are in the garage and there's nowhere else I can really keep them. What about you guys, how far have you gone to get into you character's head? I feel like there are several ways, music being the first and foremost that comes to mind. I know not all of us want to start taking drugs because our MC is a junkie, or date bad boys/girls, but what steps do you take?