HOARDER? NO!
IT'S JUST STUFF.

I’ve collected a lot of it in the 8 years of being back in home town Napier, New Zealand. It’s a tad perplexing because I’m not a hoarder. Ohhh but wait one closet-filled moment — is that what all hoarders say?

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Four and 1/2 dinner sets, two and 1/2 pot sets, a 12 piece cutlery set of which a quarter belongs to other people. The figures are mind boggling, I know.

How did I get half of anything? And how did I get a set of toddler cutlery when I haven’t had toddlers for nigh on 16 years?

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I had to psyche up for a full day before tackling the plastics cupboard. It’s located in that awkward corner, the one with useless, dark spaces under the kitchen bench. My arms can’t even reach the furry back corners which are home to little creatures that scuttle and rhyme with rockcoaches. Let’s not mention them while in the midst of selling the house.

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In this plastics cupboard, I have a beautiful red quality (read: expensive) Tupperware lid, with no matching container base. I blame the youngest (who’s now 19 and out of home so not even groundable). That container is somewhere in the school yard, buried alongside years of odd socks, pens and permission slips gone astray.

There’s also a missing drink bottle lid to my favourite eco friendly squashy gym bottle. Meanwhile, lurking on the other side of the plastics cupboard are more than 20 cheap takeaway containers, ALL with matching lids and bottoms. Go figure.

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I’ve never been a hoarder – yet my linen cupboard is full of towels I just don’t recognise. Key in my investigation, has been a name written in bold marker in the corner of some of these towels – now mine by default.

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I’ve had a permanent “left overs” shelf in my pantry – a corner that’s home to everything that anybody has ever left at our house. Stuff stays there about a month then moves either: to my own stock (that explains the cutlery draw and linen cupboard) or to the charity pile.

And sometimes to the back seat of my car where it can stay for another month while I remember – and then keep forgetting – to return it to its rightful owner.

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I’m preparing for another overseas move, packing my life into two 23kg suitcases, 7kg carry on and a very large handbag.

On our last big move from Melbourne to Napier, I had a good tidy out, keeping the hub and two kids, ditching most of everything else, and gaining a fluffy ginger cat.

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But then people give us stuff, I buy stuff, people leave stuff, I accidentally take stuff from other peoples places … well, it all adds up. One time I bought a top from an op-shop which I adored, got home to realise I’d dropped this top off at the charity bin not too long ago. Worse part? I’d ORIGINALLY brought it from the op-shop. Oh, I don’t want to talk about it.

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There’s a cathartic feel in lightening the load of stuff. There’s something meaningful in realising there’s no real value in the stuff itself –  the real value is in the memories the stuff help creates.

I’m walking around our Napier home one last time remembering it as a place that gave us 8 years of amazing memories in those busy, bumpy years of raising teens. I don’t want them back (neither the teens nor the years) but I do want to remember the moments they gave.

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Hello abroad … oh look it’s Adelaide.