Comment: House envy and the dream of the walk-in wardrobe

There’s nothing like a visit to someone else’s swish new pad for bringing your own home’s failings into the sharpest of focus.

My friend has just bought a house with a landing big enough to be a room in its own right, a huge walk-in wardrobe and a boot room – yes, an actual room for boots (and other footwear options).

As much as the pile of shoes by my own front door does bother me, and our landing is definitely more of a corridor than anything resembling a room, it’s the epic amount of hanging space that’s really got me feeling house envy.

My partner and I share a single wardrobe. It also houses a pair of suitcases, meaning longer things are usually crumpled and everything’s squeezed into a too-small space.

Then there’s the overflow area on The Chair, which is basically a heap of stuff that’s recently been taken off and is similarly hard to navigate.

The luxury of excess space is something most of us are used to living without, so a wardrobe you can walk into with rails of non-squished together clothes, is the stuff that dreams are made of.

This is the second lovely new house I’ve visited in as many weeks – the other had a walk-in wardrobe, too. And they both had the full kitchen/diner thing going on.

I’d also love a utility room – somewhere to park the washing machine when it’s in full, high-volume flow – and somewhere to hang the washing, too. Before transporting it to my huge walk-in wardrobe. One day…