Storage Wars

Men are said to have the least amount of storage space at home compared to women. But is this really true?

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British men are being squeezed out of their homes by wives and partners who take up 65 per cent of the storage space in properties, according to a new survey. Of the 2,000 couples quizzed, the average British male cohabitee was found to be in possession of just three drawers for their worldly goods, while 14 per cent only have one.

More than a quarter of men incite ire if they leave their belongings insight – 77 per cent of respondents said they had rowed about storage space – and one in 10 have had their things thrown away, the results of the study conducted by Anglian Home Improvements found. It’s not surprising that 18 per cent have resorted to keeping things in the shed!

Nick Harding, 49, and his wife Stephanie Davies, 40, report from the front line of the gender storage war…

‘I STASH THINGS IN A SECRET DRAWER’

Nick: My ‘man drawer’ is my last bastion – it’s a citadel against my wife’s territorial claims. It lives in my bedside cabinet, which was consigned to the guest room. So now, if in the night I need a multi-tool, a selfie stick, an old mobile phone from 2002 or some ski googles, I must go downstairs to get them. The items in the man drawer are under constant threat as, according to Stephanie, they are merely ‘tat’. It’s directly because of this constant, low-level threat that I’ve started hoarding items in the office – my last safe space.

Just in case

The broken remote-controlled mini-helicopter that I will one day fix is stashed in a secret drawer, as is the soldering iron that I bought from eBay with which to fix said helicopter.