Hello, my name is Niki and I’m an addict. 

No, my addiction is not a secret.  Most of my closest friends know about it.  My children just roll their eyes and indulge me when I feel the craving coming on.  I function normally on most days, but I have to be careful not to put myself in a position where I will do something unusual in pursuit of a fix.   It is especially bad when I am planning to travel – in fact, this is one of the reasons why I travel. So let me confess to it upfront:  I am a containerholic. There is no more satisfying rush than finding exactly the right container for something.  There is nothing neater and prettier than a suitcase packed exactly right, with everything in its little compartment, colour-coded of course, with the right amount of the right stuff and the exact amount of space left available for the purchases on the trip.  It makes the whole journey worthwhile. If you should buy something on your travels that does not fit exactly into its designated space – and of course this happens disturbingly often – the best thing about curio shops is the large number of souvenir tote-bags, decorated boxes and printed tins that one can buy to put the awkward thing into. It’s not only travel.  At home, I have an entire cupboard of lunch boxes to suit every conceivable combination of sandwiches and snacks.  If Tupperware had an account card, I would have one.  At supermarkets my feet drag whenever I pass the plastic-goods aisle.  My children can see the signs and they hustle me past, but if I am on my own I can spend ages opening all those wonderful snap-top, compartmentalised, many-coloured boxes and tubes, fantasising about what I would be able to fit into them. This is, unfortunately, an obsession that has its drawbacks.  I once bought a beautiful metal mini-suitcase, and asked a handy friend to customise it into the perfect overnight kit, with little compartments for each tiny bottle and vial.  But my world fell apart when I absentmindedly left the shampoo bottles in a hotel bathroom and an insensitive housekeeper threw them away.  It took me ages to find a hotel-supplies company that provided the exact-sized and -coloured replicas.  The dear people sent me a few empty bottles (and spares, in case of further disasters) as a gift, and I have nurtured fond feelings for this company ever since. The biggest challenge is that life does not always fit into my Addis snap-tops.  I have a suitcase that is perfectly customised for an overnight stay.  I have another larger suitcase that is perfect for a weekend away, and even a larger case expressly divided up for three days.  But sometimes – aaarrgghhh! – I am invited for four days.  The dilemma now is paralysing:  do I try to cram a little bit extra into my three-day container, or do I take the more roomy one-week bag and risk all those empty spaces? Packing clothes is easy:  garments can be compressed and scrunched to fit if required.  The challenge comes with things that are bought in containers.  Make-up and toiletry manufacturers are the worst – just when you have found the perfect case or zip-up bag with the right number of compartments of the right size to take your usual preparations, the company changes its packaging and the tube is now too long or the bottle too fat.  It’s a constant battle, I tell you. I don’t for a second believe that I am unusual in my quest for the right fit.  I suspect that the travel-bag scanner staff at airports are secret containerholics too.  It would explain why they are always so unfriendly.  It must try one’s soul to have to view carelessly packed luggage all day long. Buying exactly the right case or container for travel is one thing – another thrill about travel is combing markets and shops abroad for lovely little anything-holders.  Wood, metal, cloth, grass-weave, ceramic or glass.  Painted, printed, carved, coloured or plain.  There will be a most satisfying array of empty boxes or bags that you just know will be perfect for biscuits/aspirin/jewellery/lunch/knitting/coffeebeans/smallchange/sweets or – most satisfactory of all – an empty container to take all those other empty containers. There are some unromantic and unadventurous people, I am sure, who would not understand the thrill of finding the perfect container – or in fact any container at all.  These people would snort and say:  “Get a life.”  And I would retort:  “I have a life, thank you very much.  And it’s perfectly packaged!”