Wardrobes...

Wardrobes. Imposing monolithic structures that might seem harmless, unless they fall on top of you, full of jangling, unruly coathangers, have been centre stage in my life for the best part of 2025; and let’s say they’re causing havoc and generating a lot of grief. To be fair, on one level, I’m getting used to it, but on another it’s an ongoing ordeal.

The key problem is an absence of wardrobes. First, when we decided to refurbish our bedroom, it meant getting rid of wardrobes, banishing them from the house and the net result was chaos: clothes in piles everywhere and never knowing where we were at any given moment in time. “Have you seen my belt?” is one of many similar questions asked on a regular basis.

You only realise how useful something (or somebody) is when it or they are gone; and I don’t mean, when it comes to people, that they’ve died or anything nasty like that, I’m just saying that when you take something out of an equation, it’s absence is immediately noticed. Everything in life has a role to play, however big, however small, and wardrobes play a huge part in the lives of most people, and guess what? They’re taken for granted. Of course they are, the importance of most things in life is ignored and only comes to light when suddenly whatever it is isn’t there.

We won’t get into useful members of staff who, when they’re not there, show their true importance when it’s too late, but let’s talk instead about (ahem) wardrobes. For a start, they’re pretty boring to look at and, as I’ve already said, they’re imposing pieces of furniture that stand tall in a corner of the room, dominating their surroundings with the serenity of an elephant or, perhaps even a giraffe.

On recent foreign trips (to Nashville and Rotterdam) I stayed in hotels without wardrobes or, for that matter, desks and it’s not great. On a low level it makes the room look untidy as other pieces of furniture need to be employed to do the wardrobe’s job; so I employed the other bed in the room of my Nashville hotel, leaving jumpers and shirts and socks on top of it in a plastic bag, but also on wooden pegs in the wall facing the bed there were clean shirts hung up and ready to wear. The Rotterdam trip was only a couple of nights, but it meant that similar make-do tactics were employed.

Meanwhile, at home, the chaos became the norm and, like most things in life, I realised I could get by without them, although in my case alone that’s strictly not true as my wardrobe, the one that will be replaced soon, remains to this day. Initially it was wheeled on to the landing but then it rolled back into the bedroom and now it's back on the landing. Two new wardrobes are now in place. 

Tonight I will most likely empty out my old wardrobe and place my ‘stuff’ in the new one and then a semblance of order will be restored.

That hotels are dispensing with wardrobes (and desks) is a worrying trend and probably means I need to up my game and stay in a better class of inn as the day will come when hotels dispense with beds. There will be just a room and a bathroom and in the corner, rolled up, a couple of sleeping bags and ground sheets. Perhaps they won't leave them in the rooms, they'll have them downstairs on shelves behind the reception desk, like when you visit an ice skating rink or a ten-pin bowling establishment: you would be given your sleeping bag after signing for it, just like when you pick up your bowling shoes or your ice skates, and then you would have to hump them upstairs to your room, unravel them and, ultimately, sleep in them, before checking out in the morning and handing it back. You heard it here first!