There’s nothing like a new year for forcing us to look back at all the things we haven’t done in the last 12 months.

Undeterred by history’s tendency to repeat itself, I’m adding some home improvements to my list again, right up there with jogging and eating less pizza.

Such is my party lifestyle, I spent much of New Year’s Eve stuffing bags with things for the charity shop and vowing that 2018 would be the year of the mess-free stress-free home. The one that 2017 turned out not to be.

That’ll be on top of re-carpeting the whole of the upstairs of my house, fixing peeling wallpaper and installing a new bathroom floor. With any luck.

My other half is also obsessing over the ongoing Clutter Situation, and has resolved to fix this with £100-worth of plastic storage boxes. Currently the said boxes are stacked in the loft, waiting.

He was at it in the run up to Christmas too, impulse buying grout pens and special lights that turn on when you open cupboards in Amazon’s Black Friday sale.

These sorts of purchases create another form of clutter, as their packaging stacks up by the back door and causes the recycling boxes to bulge at what is already an excess paper-and-cardboard heaving time of year. We missed a collection a few weeks ago and are still paying the price.

In weightier news, experts are predicting a pretty lacklustre year for the property market, as Richard Burton discovers in this week’s feature – though this may not be a bad thing if you’re a first-time buyer.

Me, I’m going to get the New Year off to a bang by putting the grout pen that dreams are made of into action. 2018 couldn’t be any more exciting.