Two Into One?

In an era when many people struggle to buy their own home I confess to some guilt that our current first-world problem is wondering how the hell to fit the contents of two homes into the single one we now have. Let’s be honest, it’s a privileged first world problem – words I’ve uttered to friends a lot lately – so we’re not really complaining. Well, we are a little, although our grumbling is more because we really have no idea what to keep and what not to. We’ve never been good at decision making.

Our lives have been de-cluttered a few times, the first when we left England to move to New Zealand, Neil’s words: we are never again keeping something that ‘might be useful one day’ still in my mind. Well, if you have space you tend to fill it, so when you have a four-bedroom house so you can have a guest room and a home-office each – you get the picture. When we lost two bedrooms a few years ago (not through carelessness or major faultline ruptures, just moving house) we did get rid of a lot of ‘stuff’, shifting some of it to our holiday home, or bach, in Ohakune. You see where I’m going with this?

If you have a bach you generally end up with two of many things – sofas, chairs, dining tables, beds. And tell me anyone who carries a kettle/toaster/various other kitchen and bathroom implements with them every time they visit. So we currently have a garage full of furniture, along with more boxes than I care to think about and no space for the car. For a few days we had a bed, in pieces, in the dining room. We have to tell visitors to keep looking down as they walk around our house or they’ll fall over a box or a random bit of furniture.

Some decisions are easy – we knew we were never getting rid of the big pine dining table that we had made for our first home and which came out here with us, despite that it actually makes more sense to keep the new one (that we paid a fortune for less than five years ago) as it has removable leaves. And I put my foot down with a firm hand about which sofa to keep, the one that was made for me for my first solo home. It helps that it’s the comfiest sofa in the world.

Most decisions aren’t that easy. I’m a sentimental being, attaching myself to inanimate objects more than I should; if something was made for me, or it prompts a memory, I struggle to get rid of it. Plus, we take care of things – we still have the Denby crockery we bought when we set up our first home together. That was in 1995 and, despite that it’s only second grade (we had no money and thought it would do until we could afford something better) and been in almost daily use it’s still going strong. The crockery from Wellington is top quality commercial grade – I used to work for the company that imported it. Which do we keep? Add that Neil is currently very busy at work so coming ‘home’ (or downstairs from his office) he already has that glazed look of brain-overuse, therefore my asking: Which of these sieves do you prefer? is enough to cause destruction of his frontal lobe. You can imagine how popular it makes me and I’m never quite sure if he’s actually thinking about his answer or just randomly pointing.

Once we’ve made the decision about what to keep, getting rid of small stuff isn’t too much of an issue. Most of our friends have adult children so we’re happy to help them start their own hoarding careers. I mean, pass things on that they can use around the home. We even managed to get rid of a bed that way. Some things will go into drawers or sit in boxes until needed, clothes that will replace those that wear out (providing I start watching what I eat so I can fit into them in five years), foodstuffs and consumables. We have enough store-cupboard food to feed the whole street in an emergency.

One of our biggest challenges is wine. Being something of a connoisseur, for some years Neil has been buying wine and cellaring it, i.e. storing it until it’s ready to be drunk. We had the perfect space in our Wellington house, under the stairs where the temperature barely fluctuated. Here, not so much. The entire house gets hot when it’s hot and cold when it’s, well, cold. That’s death to decent wine. It’s also death to bad wine, but no one bothers to store that. Currently much of it is in boxes in wardrobes, the least temperature-fluctuating bits of the house. Some of it is lined up against the wall in the hallway, meaning a carelessly hanging bit of laundry or a handbag strap could lead to a messy (and maybe costly) mistake. Care is required here because I don’t like to see a grown man cry.

Let’s get arty. We don’t have the Mona Lisa (for which I’m grateful – not my style), but we have some lovely artworks and nowhere near enough wall to hang them on. This is where the S-word from a few paragraphs ago hoves into view – some are cheap prints and copies that filled walls and gaps until we were feeling more flush and could afford the expensive original pieces from art shows or proper art shops. I know without doubt that there will be big arguments here – I like a lot of the cheap pictures and many hold memories for me, whereas Neil will happily let them go in favour of the ‘collection’ pieces. Probably a good job we have so much wine.

Well, I could go on but I have boxes to unpack and things to find homes for. And Neil’s just announced that we need to drink some of this wine. The challenges never end.