When it comes to the interior design of modern houses, fitted wardrobes have been an absolute godsend.

Looking back over the years, those great wooden boxes that passed as wardrobes from your grandmother's era were actually as big as some new build flats that are on the market today. They may have looked lovely and been well built, lasting much longer than the flat packed versions of today, but they were cumbersome and would never fit in today's homes. They were, it seems, designed to be put into one house and stay there forever, as you would know if you had ever tried to get one out again.

The country now has a burgeoning population and this means that so many more properties are needed to accommodate everyone that they are being squeezed into ever smaller gaps. It's a little like going back to Victorian days where you would have complete families living in one room. Now, all builders do, is divide up that same space and cal it an apartment. If you put lots of these apartments together you can call it a residential development and call the top floor the pent house but at the end of the day, it's still as small space with too many people crammed into it.

Anyway, I digress, fitted wardrobes! We may have small bedrooms and we may pay extra for that cupboard that has been turned into an 'en suite' but we still need somewhere to hang our clothes. Well, the women need somewhere to hang their clothes, the men just drop them on the floor but that is the subject of a different article entirely.

You are not going to fit one of those bulky contraptions in, even if it does come with a tie rack and underwear shelf. You are going to require something a little more compact. Even a modern day, free standing wardrobe can be difficult in the new builds due to them having opening doors. This should be standard, I hear you say, but not necessarily. Try putting a double bed, a chest of drawers and a free standing wardrobe in one of these modern apartments and still have room to open the wardrobe door without doing contortionist acrobatics to get to it.

Hence, we now have the fitted wardrobe. It makes no difference the size of the gap you have. A fitted wardrobe can fit in anywhere and make use of an awkward gap. It can mean the difference between having a wardrobe and giving your man an excuse to leave his clothes on the floor.

Even those who own houses big enough for freestanding wardrobes often like the idea of a fitted wardrobe due to its sleekness and the way you can cram so much inside and simply slide the door shut over it all. That is, unless you have a fancy fitted wardrobe with opaque doors. Could never quite see the point of these myself. An object with doors is just crying out to have your life stuffed in it, making your room look tidy without the same sort of effort that a proper tidy up would entail.

Let's face it, in today's busy, tiny world we are all looking for shortcuts, whether it be from a washing machine to a car to a fitted wardrobe. All are the means to racing through life, never quite experiencing things but getting it all done in a day in time to go to bed and begin it all again the next day.