Nature abhors an empty room

For as long as I can remember, I've never thought of my family as being particularly sociable. We visited relatives and friends and they in turn came home of course, but on the whole there was none of the people dropping in whenever they felt like or sharing of food or impromtu get-togethers that are fairly routine with other more closely knit families. And we wouldnt want to have it any other way.
But for the last two years, the guest bedroom has hardly had a week to itself. First it was the uncle who used our home as base camp while he plotted and schemed to get the courts to grant his daughter a divorce. That the daughter ran away a week after the divorce came through is another story. Then it was another relative with an infected foot who needed medical attention. On the rare occasion when both these uncles were in their own homes, another uncle who had some litigation going on about some longstanding water dispute would take their place.
Then the first uncle's son, who'd finished some generic degree (in Australia; so every night we had to endure conversations dealing with every aspect of 'The Austrialian Life') used our house as a sort of labour exchange, meticulously exploiting all of my Dad's contacts till after five months, he managed to land a job. It took him another month to actually move out to his own place. Then his father (the first uncle, are you keeping up?) breaks his collar bone and his wonderfully concerned son decides to bring him here to get the docs to take a look at him but does the uncle stay in his own son's house? Oh no. Why should he when he can stay with us! Even though my cook only recently had an operation and therefore needed all the rest she could get.
Then another aunt and uncle turn up and stay put till they find a tenent for their house. Now at long last, we are guest-less. But since there's no polite way of telling people to buzz off, we've decided to put it about that we're going to paint the whole house, redo the false ceiling, inject anti-termite chemicals and generally stir up such a whirling fury of dust and paint and white cement that our house will hopefully become invisible to the naked eye (the PC term is 'unaided'; how prissy). If only we lived in Harry Potter's world, we would be the first in line to make our house Unplottable.

So when my sister told me she's thinking of building a house, my only reaction was 'Invest in some virtual reality, 3D, CGI screen that makes your spare bedroom permanently resemble some building site, if you dont want to be inundated with relatives who casually invite themselves to long stays at your house. She had a simpler idea. Hide the door to the room behind a bookcase. Afterall most people wont go within 10 yards of books. How true.