I used to hate homeowners. Until I became one.

An Englishman’s house is his castle. 16th century jurist Edward Coke said that. I say castles are overpriced, and an absolute nightmare to clean.

I know because I’ve just bought one. Well, part of one. My girlfriend owns a significantly larger portion of it than I do, and therefore a significantly larger portion of me than she used to.

It has three bedrooms. One for every decade I’ve been on this planet, which already feels unnecessary. Or it did, until we unpacked the combined history of our two lives. I will never look down on people who love their garden sheds again.

We’ve got the boring stuff out of the way, like painting the walls and changing the carpets. I say we - we got a guy in to do it, because we are both far too short and incompetent to do any meaningful house work ourselves.

Once the carpet fitting was finished, we were left with what I can only describe as a supplementary layer of carpet vapour. It sat, uninvited, on top of the one we had actually ordered. It was like our real carpet was being choked by whatever the equivalent of 19th Century London smog is for carpets. Clearing the overcast conditions took several days, days which my lower back and knees will never get back. The carpet continues to produce such fluff, as if it’s breeding, producing little carpetlings behind my back.

Carpet fluff aside, the new house is now spotless, primarily because I haven’t had time to wreck it yet. My girlfriend shouting at me not to touch the freshly painted walls definitely helped.

I’m not accustomed to living in such clinical conditions. It is quite the departure from the one bed flats I had previously rented in London, both of them in undesirable locations and in undesirable states of upkeep due to budgetary constraints.

It is also quite the departure from my childhood dwelling. If archaeologists dug up my parents’ house in millennia to come, they would be absolutely baffled by the presence of a smart speaker in the same room as wallpaper, sofas and chairs that haven’t been changed for forty years.

It would be like discovering a domestic version of the Mary Celeste - suddenly abandoned in the mid-80s, perfectly preserved in its original state. My parents also clean the toilet before going on holiday, presumably in case the burglar needs to defecate on his way out.

That level of hygiene might sound like a dream, but they have also kept the luggage tag from our first ever family holiday, alongside literal rooms of other well-meaning stuff, stuff that undoubtedly has sentimental value, but mainly acts as a tripping hazard.

The lounge contains a large illustration of me, their son, above a glass cabinet, like a shrine, despite the fact I am not yet deceased. Alternatively, guests are left to assume the idol is where pagans come to sacrifice a goat to the great god J Cash.

It’s not just my parents who have strange habits about their homes, as I am swiftly realising as most of my friendship group hits mortgageable age.

I have good friends who have moved to deepest darkest Kent, but are absolutely convinced they are still close to life, because they are a ten minute drive away from a station that is a 45 minute train to London. At least they have a free standing bath they can pour their dreams of rural-urban balance into.

They have five bedrooms, for all of those times both sets of parents, both sets of siblings, both sets of aunts, uncles, dogs, cats and general well-wishers want to stay over simultaneously.

It is also a listed house. I don’t want a listed house. It sounds like a lot of responsibility for someone who measures their age in decades, not centuries. Nor do I fancy a doer-upper, because I’m not Nick Knowles, and neither are you.

Yet, now I am a home owner too, I know we are all afflicted by such quirks and delusions. I am resolved to being less judgmental on the ones others hold, lest they become judgmental of the ones I do.

If someone removed the newly purchased sound system from my kitchen, for example, I would go on a Liam Neeson in Taken-style rampage without a moment’s hesitation. If my girlfriend continues to allow recycling to pile up by the back door, instead of opening it and putting in the bin that is literally two steps away, it might be the end of her too.

Those are my stipulations. I will allow her a borderline obsessive level of care for our walls. She’ll make a great mum, if her protective instincts for stretches of polished pebble paint are anything to go by. I will allow her to continue hiding all mail – regardless of its importance – in the draws of our coffee table, just so we can be shocked into doing unwelcome life admin at inopportune times.

But mostly I will allow the rest of you to do whatever strange things you want in your house as well. After all, it’s your castle, not mine.