KEY POINTS:
I am heartily sick of stuff. My stuff in particular .
How I accumulated such an extensive collection of rubbish is beyond me. Knick-knacks, gewgaws, tchochkas, mismatched glassware, chipped vases with mad Japanese patterns on them, cheap detective thrillers, inexplicable wicker laundry hampers.
I don't remember paying good
money for any of this tat, and I certainly don't remember choosing it. Unless I had a series of head injuries over the last few years that have somehow slipped my mind, there can be no explanation for how I come to find myself burdened with such a surfeit of junk.
I am considering such matters because I am moving house. After 3 1/2 years in one abode I am preparing to up sticks and decamp to another. If only it were as simple as boiling a billy and pitching a tent.
The stress and hassle of moving out, moving on and moving in makes me long for a simpler life. When John Lennon imagined a world without possessions he was probably shifting flats.
The "renunciation of worldly goods" aspect of being a Trappist monk is appealing to me hugely in the face of a mountain of cardboard boxes and the issue of what to do with the futon.
It didn't used to be like this. I arrived in New Zealand unencumbered by anything save an impenetrable accent and a backpack.
And for many years I remained in the same position, moving around the suburbs of Auckland with freedom and ease, wilfully resisting the lure of stuff.
By "stuff" of course I mean anything that isn't clothes, shoes, books and cosmetics. Those are essentials, "stuff" is everything else. Mirrors and wastepaper baskets, woks, brooms, wardrobes. All the things considered a natural consequence of domesticity.
It isn't that I am an ascetic type of individual. I'm not. I like worldly comforts, and the idea of living in a cave eating berries or standing on one leg atop a pillar for 10 years clad only in hemp does not appeal.
No, I'm as well able to draw a bath or flop on to a couch as the next person. It is simply the idea of buying a bath or a couch that mystifies me. The idea of walking into Freedom Furniture, or whatever the place that sells baths is called, and choosing and purchasing such an item is completely beyond my ken.
I know very little about beds baths and beyond, but I am aware that even the cheapest ones tend to cost quite a bit of money. Money that is then in consequence unavailable for bags, shoes, books and blue drinks. If having a couch means not having 10 dresses, I know which I'm happier to forfeit, and it ain't the dresses.
Of course I realise the immaturity of this attitude; people live in dwellings and dwellings need stuff in them in order to be comfortable. And so, being an adult means making one's peace with the inevitable acquisition of stuff.
The only reason I managed to get away with not shelling out for furniture for as long as I did was by choosing my flatmates strategically. I would only ever move into flats that were already set up, with a full complement of whiteware and soft furnishings. I don't feel too bad about this; I know existing flats choose their new flatmates on the basis of what they can bring to the party.
I have more than one friend who rues the day she invited a sociopath to share her home on the basis of a flatscreen plasma TV/rowing machine /job at a liquor wholesaler.
Flatting is a matter of give-and-take, and I liked to think that what I lacked in furniture I made up for in fellowship and good cheer.
This is total rubbish of course, and sooner or later I had to make a choice: buy something for the flat or live with the nagging realisation of being a 25-year-old parasite. So I caved. When the TV broke I bought us another one. On HP naturally. I still couldn't bring myself to hand over a lump sum. That was the beginning of it.
The TV was followed by some crockery and some kitchen chairs, which were followed by a futon, which necessitated new bedding and so forth, down the spiral of Egyptian cotton and thread count all the way to a personal nadir of two European pillows and a decorative throw.
And so here I am now, the last of an old flat to go. In dismantling our old home I find myself confronted by all manner of artefacts that, somehow or another, have come into my possession. Busted-up couches and straw hats, the dusty remains of scented candles, a TV stand minus the doors.
It's not really fair to say I have no knowledge of their provenance; each one is an artefact, a relic of a certain time in my life, a happy time. A mad jumble of stuff, each piece worthless in itself, but taken together as a record of the years spent here, priceless.
And so I'll pack it all up and put it into boxes and take it with me to my new home and keep it there to remind me of who I am and where I have been. I am now officially a person with stuff.
The joke is on me of course: the new place comes fully furnished. Does anyone want to buy a futon?