For some people, their bedroom is a haven of peace and tranquility, a space that one keeps neat and tidy to aid relaxation – but this is rarely the case for teens.
Some of them (and, let’s be honest, us) are perfectly happy to live like farm animals, using the floor as an open-plan storage solution for everything from dirty socks to unidentifiable foodstuffs.
Finished your cereal? Slide the bowl under your bed with the others. Jeans need a wash? Fling them vaguely towards the windowsill to fester for a month or so. Looking for your phone? Try under the pile of sweet wrappers, receipts and old shoelaces on your bedside table, next to the crinkly book you spilled a drink on eight months ago and didn’t even attempt to dry and haven’t picked up since.
Bed manufacturers, Bed SoS, attempted to track down the 10 messiest bedrooms in the UK by getting people to send in pictures. And it’s a pretty impressive crop.
Here they are, from 10th place to first.
10.
Samantha Oakley has done the classic messy-room move of accidentally adopting a stepladder as a storage solution. It was probably brought in last winter, when it was time to change a bulb, but was immediately covered in so much stuff that it became impossible to move.
9.
Sophie shared this picture of her daughter’s messy room. So parents, be rest assured there are probably a lot of rooms messier than your own child’s.
8.
Emma Fox put admirable effort into decorating her windowsill, and less effort into everything else. What is that big blue thing on the left?
7.
Hannah Griffin shared this picture of her 20-year-old son’s bedroom. A lot of interesting things here: the cowboy hat, a random creepy doll, and a few other strange faces. Badass duvet, too.
6.
Haleema Khanum should be commended for making sure she left the door to her (surprisingly clean) toilet open for this picture. This looks a bit like organised chaos to me.
5.
Someone known only as Jenny provided this picture of her daughter’s room. And all we can think is... where does she sleep? On top of it all?
4.
Phillip Burch says he struggles to walk around his bed, suggesting he does the extremely efficient thing of just stamping across all the mess like a monster.
3.
Melek Gel has done the classic interior design thing of carefully framing a picture to put on the wall, then just as carefully forgetting about it for ages. There’s a cuddly seal on the bed... and there might be an actual seal under all that other crap.
2.
Runner-up Sam Thomas was assured by her boyfriend that, when she moved in with him, they’d transform the bedroom into a ‘romantic boudoir’. Safe to say, that didn’t happen.
1.
And finally, the winner. Anna Wrigley, from Kendal in Cumbria, has part of last night’s takeaway on the floor, at least three empty drinks bottles and a solo flip-flop. Anna – who has since claimed that it’s actually her friend’s room, a likely story – was given a free bed for her efforts. Will she get rid of the old bed, or just shove it in a corner and use it as a receptacle for more litter?