Every house has one. The box room. That mystical, multi-purpose, somewhat mythical space.

It starts its life with noble intentions - a guest bedroom, a home office, a reading nook perhaps - but it inevitably evolves into a chaotic landfill of forgotten ambitions.

‘Oh, this will come in handy someday’, we say, placing yet another broken lamp into the growing pile of clutter. Fast forward three years, and the lamp is still there.

Want to store winter clothes? Box room. Don’t know where to put the weird ornament your great aunt gave you? Box room. Half-finished DIY project? You guessed it - box room.

And let’s not forget the guilt. Every time we pass that door, we think, I should really sort that room out.

Maybe one day we’ll clear it out. Or maybe we’ll just keep adding to it until it becomes sentient and takes over the house.

So here’s to the box room, the unsung hero of the home. It may be full of junk, but at least we know where everything is. Sort of.

The Mountain of Doom

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a neat freak, and like the house sparkling clean,

Everything polished and in its place; the space is tidy and pristine.

But hidden behind the gleaming white door of the small and cramped box room,

Stands the only exception to my principle – the sky-scraping Mountain of Doom.

This towering mountain is made not of minerals, soil and rocks,

But of garments, oddments of every assortment and numerous fluffy socks.

If you were to cut into this mountain and closely examine the cross-section,

You’d be confounded at what you would find upon closer inspection.

A half-burned scented candle, one strappy jelly sandal, a troublesome airbed pump,

A spindly wooden stool that broke long ago under the weight of my sizeable rump.

A couple of books that have been compressed for so long, the pages have become fused.

A fake cactus, and ab-crunching apparatus that - despite my porky posterior - remains unused.

An empty picture frame, a board game, countless hair accessories of all possible types,

A CD I have no recollection of buying, titled ‘Pride of Scotland: The Sound of the Bagpipes’.

A poster of The Backstreet Boys, a can of paint for wheel alloys, a tub of mouldy moisturizer,

In all honesty, a corpse could be concealed in here, and I would be none the wiser.

A pink and purple globe, parts of a disassembled wardrobe, a container of crusty hair gel,

A bag of Walkers ready-salted crisps, a pack of dried out felt-tips, and an unappealing smell.

An instruction manual for a Woolworths toaster circa 2003, a Nokia 3210 mobile phone,

A socket wrench, and the source of the stench; the dog’s buried, rotting bone.

A shoebox of undoubtedly dead AA batteries, containing approximately fifty-nine,

A broken tape measure, a car air freshener, scent of snowy woodland pine.

A couple of Greek drachma, a few French francs and one lonely Spanish peseta,

I pity my plight, stare up at the summit’s height and curse the fact I’m its creator.