But in this country, and particularly the estate in which I live, they are simply too small to carry out this task.

When we first moved into our current property, I carefully drove the car into the garage, and found I was unable to open the doors wide enough to get out. Well, that's not strictly true, as if I climbed over the rear seats, and belly-flopped myself into the boot, and asked my wife to flip open the boot, I was able to scramble out – just.

If you take a walk or drive through any Hampton street, cars are left in abandoned-like states near people's homes, and never actually inside the little brick houses, which also appear to be being built further and further away from where people live.

Because we want these little buildings used, we've paid for them after all, we all store our un-used stuff in them, instead of our cars. And from this moment on, I will refer to my garage as a junk-house, because that's exactly what it is. And our junk-house right now is making my wife depressed. It's so full, so packed with stuff that we don't use but are too afraid to throw away, that closing the door to it is becoming a troublesome task.

Among the items in our lock up you will find a double bed (with mattress), 80 kids bikes, a set of broken goal-posts, a dining table with chairs, two old tellies, a large barbecue on wheels, a George Foreman fat buster grilling machine, nine large cardboard boxes filled with junk I didn't know we had, a kid's trampoline, 300 square feet of old carpet and three lawn mowers (only one that works.)

And I challenge you to deny the fact that your garage, sorry, your junk-house, isn't identical to mine. There is an upside to this situation, if you can be bothered. Let's face it, right now we are all skint, so why not do what the fella 10 doors up from us did this past weekend, and hold a 'sale' of all your garage garbage?

He put up a huge banner with the words "Garage Sale" and distributed leaflets to more than a thousand homes. He neatly laid out his stuff up his driveway, price tagged everything, then sat back and waited for the bargain hunters to arrive.

I'm not sure how much he took, or how many kiddies' bikes he got rid of, but bearing in mind this nations obsession with car boot sales, I bet the total wasn't to be sniffed at.

And while he may still have trouble fitting his car in, I bet his wife is less depressed than mine, and he can probably now physically get into his junk-house with no difficulty closing the door behind him afterwards.