THERE are two words almost guaranteed to strike terror into a woman's heart at this time of year: back bedroom.

I do have a friend to whom I try not to mention the words at any time of year, as they're a very sore point in her house, but so many people have said: "Our back bedroom is a tip/disgrace/nightmare," in the last month to convince me that, at spring-cleaning time, back bedrooms become the room with an "ugh".

Convention seems to decree that the double bedroom at the front of the house is the "master bedroom". While children are at home and occupy a back bedroom, it's only a nightmare in the way all youngsters' bedrooms are, but, once they've flown, it develops cunning little ways.

Still looking just like a bedroom, maybe even with the bed permanently made up, it begins to secrete oddments in its corners - just a few bits of bric brac for a coffee morning stall and that suit to go into the next charity bag, plus a pile of magazines to pass on to a friend. We'll give it a good "do" when those have gone.

Before we know what's happened, it's acquired a redundant chair, the cat's travelling basket, a pile of mending and the tools the resident male brought in for a job we don't remember him doing, never mind completing.

If we take our eyes off it for a week or so, that wretched room breeds more clobber. No-one admits to putting it there anyway, so breeding has to be the answer.

At that point, it's such a tip that sorting it out requires more time than we have just at the minute but, because it's such a tip, more and more gets put in there "until we sort it out". Sorting it out begins to take on the aspect of "when I get a free day".

Ours has been even worse than usual while we stored stuff for a fundraising event. That was held last week. Have I got round to sorting the room out this week? Not unless you've seen flying pigs.

There's still bric brac and tombola prizes accumulating for another cause's event in early May, plus all the stuff silting up in there while the place was such a mess that a bit more wouldn't make much difference. When I get a free day ...

My dream home will have attics and cellars, huge ones. Sir's boyhood home did, and the poor soul's never got his head round a titchy three-bedroomed semi where there just isn't room to hoard stuff.

But other women, who don't have to cope with a human squirrel, also have back bedrooms they claim are in a similar state. They, too, are trying to find the courage - and a free day - to tackle the problem.

As spring sun, highlighting every corner after winter's gloom, stirs the old urge for an orgy of cleaning, back bedrooms defy the dauntless, never mind someone like me who shares Mr Mole's attitude as he surfaced to head for the riverbank and Ratty: "Hang spring cleaning."

Meanwhile, I wonder if people who move their sleeping arrangements into the back bedroom lift the curse or whether it is simply a case of role reversal and: "Our front bedroom's a tip since we went to sleep in the back." If I ever get ours habitable, I might experiment.