Pretentious? Moi?

Ever since we moved into our house, nearly three years ago now, we have been struggling with what to call the various rooms. No, we don’t live in a mansion and yes, I know it’s not the biggest problem anyone ever had, but still. The kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms are obvious, but any other rooms you’re fortunate enough to have are more problematic.

For instance, the room where everyone sits and watches TV was always called the lounge when I was a child. Then we moved to Canada and it transformed itself into a living room. And now that I live in England again it’s still a living room. It would never occur to me to call it the lounge or even the sitting room, although I know many do. Years ago, working class people had a front room or parlour, which they rarely used despite living in very small houses. On the opposite end of the housing ladder, I understand the Queen used the term drawing room, but you’d have to be very grand to have a drawing room. Or pretentious.

Speaking of which, I am sitting writing this in what I call my library. I know. It really is just a spare room with my desk and books in it, but in our previous house I also had a room I called my library. If my husband can lurk in a study, then I can definitely hang out in a library. What else would I call it? She-cave is too awful. It’s far too respectable to be called a boudoir. And you can’t have two studies in one house. My daughter is also the proud owner of a library and she doesn’t own a country estate either.

Our study, by the way, is really the dining room, but we’ve never had one of those. We have always eaten at the kitchen table. I can’t imagine what Queen Elizabeth would have said about that. Although she was known for her love of Tupperware, so she might well have enjoyed it.

Then we have a little sitting area off the kitchen that faces the garden. It’s tiny, but we call it the garden room, which sounds very grand, but in three years we haven’t come up with a better name. It’s not a conservatory, but perhaps we could grow an orange tree in there and call it an orangery. Perhaps not, it’s just too awkward to say.

Then we have two other teeny tiny rooms – one full of cupboards containing the pantry, washer, dryer and cleaning things and another, even tinier, containing the boiler (furnace for my North American friends) with two lift-up bench storage areas. What can you call these little spaces? I suppose we could call the room with the pantry a utility room, but we never have. Utility is such an ugly word I always think. We call the one with the benches the boot room because we store our boots there and also because once you have a library and a garden room, you may as well continue being very grand.

Having written this, I am determined not to be embarrassed that, despite living in a modest semi-detached house in the middle of a town, we have a library, a garden room and a boot room. I’m just going to embrace the grandeur and call the little room full of cupboards the butler’s pantry. I think it has a nice ring to it.