Esther McCarthy: When does treasure become mere tat?I found a scroll in a cardboard yoke and pulled it out expecting it to be a print of some sort, Instead, it was my great-great-uncle Eugene’s teaching diploma from 1929. Sat, 12 Sep, 2026 – 20:22Esther N McCarthyEsther McCarthy is a columnist covering the chaos, comedy and complexities of life for Irish women.
The painters are in. This is not a euphemism. There are, as I type, actually three men in the kitchen with ladders and rollers and putty.
Today they are just prepping the walls. This is a good thing as I lied when he asked me if I have my colours picked out. I know I want some kind of green, but I get overwhelmed looking at all the options. Sage, hemlock, mantis, mint, dark olive, lawn, aquamarine, malachite, komu… oh my! I’m turning a shade of green trying to decide. I throw on the kettle and have a… dammit! A green tea.
The thing nobody tells you about painting is that before you can paint a room, you have to confront every object you’ve been successfully ignoring in it for the last decade.
“Can I ask you something?” says the boss man. “Yeessss?” I say, warily, hoping it isn’t about anything green.
“Do you have something tall, a pole or something, that we could get the cobwebs with?”
My husband has to hold me back. “Let me at him!” I shout, Katie Taylor and Scrappy-Doo thrumming in my veins. “I’ll show ya where you can put that pole!”
I didn’t really. I meekly hand him the yoke we use to open the Veluxes and he puts a cloth on top of it and climbs a ladder and starts sweeping across the walls.
I go upstairs to consider my life choices. Do you know the way you get used to your house, but then you’re forced to see it through the eyes of strangers?
Strangers in overalls. I refuse to be judged by a man who looks like a rejected Mario Brother. Like, why do I have to shoulder the burning shame of an unkempt skirting board?
There are five of us in this house. We all suffer from cobweb blindness; just because I’m the only female, why should the state of the place fall solely on my sagging shoulders?
There is a lot of crap around though. The problem with open-plan rooms is everything ends up there. On the floor, as I desperately try to create some space for your man’s ladder, there are three sets of weights, two laundry baskets, a yoga mat, and a partridge in a pear tree. Is everyone’s house like this? Or am I just Stig of the Dump in a pair of leggings?
When the kids were small, I could at least fall back on the reassurances from everyone that they have so much stuff at this age; don’t worry, there’ll be less ‘things’ around when they get a bit older. But they lied. Right to my face. Because now I’m struggling around golf clubs and a cart (a cart! An electric cart no less. Give me a Lego set any day) and scooters and hurleys and the rest.
But then, I can’t really blame the kids for the amount of stuff in the house. If I acquire any more shoes, I could be legally declared insane.
And it’s not just my stuff, this problem is intergenerational. I found a scroll in a cardboard yoke and pulled it out expecting it to be a print of some sort that I had fancifully imagined I’d get framed one day.
Instead, it was my great-great-uncle Eugene’s teaching diploma from 1929.
Like, what am I supposed to do with that? I can’t throw it away. He had no children I can fob it off on. Does it go back in the drawer, for another 10 years, until I get the place painted again?
These are the things that bog me down.
You can’t throw that up on Vinted.
Side note: I did declare in an earlier column that I would sell some stuff on Vinted. This has not happened. Instead, I found the Homeware section and ramped up my buying activities to mortifying proportions.
Also, did you know there’s a new option for delivery? You can get packages sent to allocated shops instead of the post office.
As the lads in my local post office have started to sigh heavily every time I rock in (on the plus side, no need to show my ID anymore), I decided to start choosing the store option for delivery.
On my third visit to Boots this week, the girl tells me that they are going to stop doing it because they are getting too many deliveries.
She looks pointedly down at the massive box I was trying to fandangle into my trolley.
“I know this looks bad,” I say to her, “but I got all this for half the RRP from an Orla Kiely collector who’s moving house. And it matches a teapot I have. I’d have been a fool NOT to buy it.”
She leans in, over the counter to me.
“I do not care,” she says. “We are not friends. Stop oversharing. Bugger off home. You’re blocking the queue.” She didn’t really, but that’s what I interpret her Gen Z blank stare of death to mean.
Anyway, now I have to find space for all my new treasures. Or get rid of some old ones. It’s a simple equation, one in, so one out.
But I was never very good at maths.
Now I’d better go and make the painters a cup of tea. I hope they appreciate supping out of Irish designer bargain cups.
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