Nobody has a genuinely "spare" room. How many people do you know who have a totally empty room, or maybe a bare room with one or two pieces of furniture covered with sheets?

Many people have a room that they call the "spare room", because it's not the kitchen, lounge room, dining room, etc., or it has a bed in it but not one that someone sleeps in most nights. Perhaps it's just a storage room, or a room the cats really like so you leave them to it, or it's where you have your model railway but you still call it the "spare room" because who's ever heard of someone having a "train room", or a "cat room", or a "Marvel Comics room" adjacent to your "DC Comics room".

We have a region of what is technically the same room as our kitchen which an estate agent would call a dining area. Because everything that slithers out from between an estate agent's lips is a lie, the dining area is too small to accommodate even a modest dining table, unless you dispense with half of the chairs. So my dear lady wife and I do so, and use the space for card games and jigsaw puzzles and perverse sexual practices (only two out of three of these things are true, sadly - I used to like the occasional game of cards) on a dining table pushed up against the wall. We never dine there, it is not a room, but it is still "the dining room".

Who are we to label rooms? I say we should just let the rooms be. Maybe number them if we must. Or give them proper names: "I have to go to Simon; can you wait in Meredith for me in case the potatoes boil over?"