What was the last row in your house about?

Chances are it was something trivial.

A survey of 2,000 families this week found it’s not the big issues that get us het up as much as everyday niggles like the noise of the TV, somebody hogging the bathroom, or using the last of the milk.

How often do you find yourself using those well-worn put-downs “you always…” or “you never…”?

If you have teenagers, home is a place buzzing with the sound of electronic software, music blaring from different rooms, doors banging, phones ringing.

With four of them crashing around our house my constant moan was: “ I can’t hear myself think.”

Mornings were mayhem. Just getting everyone out the door with the right PE equipment and without a strop about who had eaten the last of the Shreddies was a triumph.

Now with a husband home all day it’s been replaced by loud early-morning throat clearing from the bathroom, the relentless chirping of breakfast TV and one too many leaders debates trying to influence me how to vote in this election.

Let’s face it silence is the rarest quality in our noise-filled society.

People leave work and immediately switch on their phones in case they’ve missed something vital. You can’t travel on public transport without umpteen conversations droning on around you while you’re trying to read your book.

All of this information overload makes us tense and ready to snap.

So is it any wonder that 53% of the people in this week’s survey claimed their home was “chaotic and noisy”.

But other little daily irritations cause family rows.

We frequently had a “crisp” incident in our house. One son would open the family pack of crisps, take the bags of cheese and onion flavour (which all his brothers and sister wanted) and leave them the plain and prawn cocktail bags.

Or my blood pressure would rise when I’d go into their bedrooms and find mouldy crusts under the bed, socks festering in a corner, or a sweaty gym kit they’d forgotten to dump in the washing basket.

“How hard is it,” I’d rant, “to bring your stuff down to the kitchen?”

Too hard. So another family row chalked up.

Teens “borrowing” each others’ clothes or sports gear or bikes is guaranteed to create tension. And the time one son borrowed the family car and crashed it made for a spectacular incident which would put Jeremy Clarkson’s “fracas” into the shade.

Not closing doors, forgetting to pass on information, leaving scummy water in the washbasin, putting the wrong things in the recycling aren’t major crimes against humanity but on a bad day they can get under our skin and make us explode.

How do we find serenity at home?

I’m still working on that one, hoping the day will come when those half-finished jobs my husband has started but not completed won’t irritate me.

Seems unlikely though.

You see, he “always” and he “never”…