THE spare room of our house gets badly treated all year round, becoming a dumping ground for anything and everything.

There is a bed in there, but at the moment you can barely see it, so loaded down is it with boxes and bags and clothes and washing and various bits and pieces.

It is, handily, carnage which can easily be concealed by simply closing a door when there are visitors in the house who might witness it on their way to use the (only) facilities upstairs.

This at least means we have to clean just the entire-house-minus-one-room when non-overnight guests arrive.

I do feel sorry for this downtrodden little space, particularly at this time of year when I have entered pre-Christmas mode.

The Editor has banned anyone from mentioning the word until the start of December but, as all we organised people know, you need to start thinking about yuletide well before the month in which it occurs.

Admittedly, I am a tad alpha, and I am a neurotic Virgo who plans and plans in order to prevent myself getting any more anxious than is really necessary.

So I lay out my following plans not to brag, but to give you a window into the world of a person who feels the need to organise to this extent.

I am, after all, a complete nutcase who once took a laminated folder of what we were doing and when to Walt Disney World.

My approach has always been, for as long as I have been buying gifts for other people, to buy them when you spot something perfect, regardless of how far away it is from the occasion on which they will be presented with said pressie.

This is to avoid me missing the opportunity to purchase it, or not being able to remember what I spotted, or frustratingly failing to get hold of it when I then need it for the person’s birthday or Christmas present.

But it does mean that there is a mountain of gifts in our spare room ‘gathering dust’, as my dad would say, and taking up quite a lot of room we could be doing with for general storage space.

They’re joined by my present wrapping equipment – rolls of paper, ribbons, tags and so on – plus a box of cards I have similarly spotted throughout the year and thought would be ideal for a certain someone.

Once November hits, I spring into action, bit by bit working my way through systematically, wrapping the overseas gifts and making a list – and checking it twice – of the little bits which still need to be purchased.

For me, genuinely, this proves to be the least stressful approach.