Ever heard of home-in-home? It’s a brand new concept exclusively designed for times of existential crisis, like neck injuries, heart breaks and man flu.

All you have to do is call your nearest furniture dealer for an emergency delivery. Pick the biggest sofa you can get, so big it will barely fit into your room. Adorn it with lots of fluffy cushions and make sure you get the lounge extension as well. These are all vital parts of your new space!

Once it’s all delivered and assembled, it’s time for you to move in. Let me give you the grand tour!

The boiler room is the first thing you need to fix up. Usually located in the right end of your sofa, this section plays an essential role in your survival, so you must maximize the heating. For that, you’ll need two things – a lazy dog and a toasty duvet.

For obvious reasons, the dog must have an appropriate size – too big and it will take over your living space, too small and you might squeeze the poor thing. Personally, I warmly recommend a wire-haired dachshund, preferably under the age of 14 as the farting gets worse and worse with the years and the last thing you want is that not-so-delicate smell to burst out and slam you in the nose as soon as you open the boiler room.

For the duvet, you should go for a 13.5 tog rating (or an 18.0 Arctic if you’re more a goosebumps kind of guy) and a high ratio of down as it makes it lighter and loftier. The key word here being light, as you don’t want your dog to get squashed and suffocate to death (unless you’re a natural born Pet Killer like my friend Tinne).

On the opposite side of the boiler room, in the left end of your sofa, you will find the kitchen with the storeroom. Remember – you’re in the middle of a crisis! So it’s all about stocking food and ensuring the survival of the fattest – at this stage, “fit” is only for skinny bitches and meatheads on steroids. The secret behind the storeroom is patience as it all grows by itself, slowly but surely. The more cookies, crisps and cheese you chew on, the bigger your stock. You don’t believe me? Well, try and lift the cushion and you’ll find a whole world of tiny little crumbs hiding behind it, looking right back at you. Thanks to them, you will never starve – but beware of the sneaky bastard from the boiler room! Make sure your kitchen is dog-proofed!

Then, somewhere along the back of your sofa, this is where you meticulously locate your library. Piles of books you bought ages ago and haven’t touched since. With most life crises comes a quest for a higher intellectual purpose, so you feel it’s time to dust off those long-forgotten catalogues of trivial words and impenetrable phrases you couldn’t care less about. But don’t fool yourself – you know perfectly well they’re just there on display. Everybody knows you’ll end up spending most of your time on your Smartphone anyway, checking out the same skinny bitches and meatheads on Tinder.

Which brings us to the roof of your home-in-home sofa. Lying on your back, your head bolted to the seat between the storeroom cushions and the cliff down to the floor, there is only one way you can make sure to get the perfect wifi connection – by holding your arms straight up in the air, like a human antenna, until they’re completely deprived of blood and go Thriller on you. It’s amazing how much you can achieve with numb fingers when you’re too lazy to sit up.

But the best part of it all is the balcony, right at the end of the lounge section. From there, the view is fantastic! Close your eyes and you will see the most fabulous fragments of a life you’ve been filling your dreams with since you were a child. Beautiful landscapes, bird songs, waterfalls, rainbows, unicorns and intense lovemaking. You can feel the passion… at least until you open your eyes again and remember why the lover of your dreams doesn’t want you – you’re a Prince Charming in crisis and you look like shit. So, you’re more like the horse right now. And frankly, nobody wants to shag a horse in such a bad shape (or in any shape at all for that matter)!

This pretty much sums it up for me these days. The pitiful Prince with the broken neck, confined to his 6.5 m2 sofa for most of the day. But I’m not complaining as it could be much worse. I’m recovering quite fast so I’ll be back on track soon enough. In the meantime, I’ll stay up late in my newly fixed-up library, working on my blog, flanked with my dog to keep me warm and Martin to feed me properly.

Welcome to my home-in-home! 😎

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