Kerre Woodham: Curtains for staying calm

We moved back into our renovated cottage over Labour Weekend.

How terribly upwardly mobile, scoffed friends when we told them we were bringing in the builders four months ago.

However, if they knew how close we were to being downwardly mobile as we plummeted through the rotting floorboards in the bathroom, then they'd have been more understanding.

Our little worker's digs was the 400th house ever registered in Auckland and nobody had really looked after her since.

I would have preferred not to be the one who had to give her some TLC - I was all for selling to some cashed-up ex-pats and running away, but the Irishman wouldn't run with me so there we were.

It's a bit like passing the property parcel - when the music stops, you're it. We had the best architect and the most sympathetic builders but oh sweet Lord. Once it was up to us to move back in, that was when the horror began.

I had no idea how stressful it would be to move a few boxes from A to B. What was there to stress about? Just a matter of unpacking and putting things away, right?

Oh so wrong. When we bought the house 12 years ago, I was flatting and so all I had was a suitcase. It was the first house I had owned so I had no idea how much stuff a family can collect in 12 years. We'll still be unpacking when it's time to pack up again and move to a rest home.

And then there was the other stuff. Who knew shopping for a couch could be such a nightmare.

I drove in a mad panic from Wairau Park, to Newmarket, to Mt Eden, to Parnell trying to find a couch last week before Mum arrived for the weekend.

I felt like a little fat Goldilocks sitting on couches that were too hard, too soft, too low, too deep.

I was paralysed with indecision and so we all sat on the dining room chairs and tried to pretend it was fun baching.

And curtains - the nightmare of swatches fried my brain. It was the last straw.

When the lovely man from the curtain place came round with little bits of fabric, my synapses froze. I didn't know there WERE shades of white. It's not my thing. I have no style and my admiration for those who do has increased a zillion fold.

I started speaking in tongues, gibbering and gabbering and trying not to cry. Who cries over curtain swatches? I grabbed some readymades on sale at Spotlight and they'll have to do.

Pointless spending a king's ransom on renovations if I cause the property values in the 'hood to plummet because I'm wandering round naked in full view of the street.