In a lower middle-class family, for example, a lounge was for sitting on, plates and cutlery were for eating, a television was for watching. There may have been objects or art, but they weren't fetishised.

It wasn't until she grew older that she realised not all households were like this.

"When I grew up and I started to visit other people's homes, I realised that people have status, or self-esteem, even, attached to this stuff," she says.

And, as a writer, it's other people's relationships to stuff that has always fascinated her, particularly people who have, broadly speaking, too much of everything. So much that it becomes a problem.

Her latest novel, Love Objects, has hoarding at its centre, but it's about more than just the epic jumbles of things we often associate with the disorder. It's about plugging the holes of loneliness, building fortresses against heartbreak, finding solace in the tactile, and comfort in the soft, solid and unquestioning nature of physical objects.

Her protagonist, Nic, may have a decade's worth of newspapers squeezed into a house filled with all other kinds of junk, but she has a reason for keeping everything. Her niece, Lena, who has long worshipped her cool aunt, has no idea what lies behind Nic's front door. And she's got problems of her own - involving uni, social media, a sex video that's made its way online, a series of problems she can't work out how to clear away. When Nic and Lena's respective problems collide, catastrophe ensues.

It's a story told with humour and compassion, raising questions about the meaning of privacy, memory, family and self-esteem.

Maguire is the author of six novels (including the Stella and Miles Franklin-shortlisted An Isolated Incident) and three works of non-fiction, and teaches creative writing to others when she's not working on her own books. While she's opted out of writing full-time - she finds it too intense - she says she has multiple ideas for books in her head at all times.

But she's long wanted to write a story about hoarding. When she learned about a writer-in-residence program with the Charles Perkins Centre, a medical research institute in Sydney, she decided to apply, with hoarding as her hook.

"Nic [as a character] sort of came to me, but I was still really reluctant because I know how much stigma there is associated with hoarding," she says.

"I also know from the bit of research I did on my own it's really poorly understood behaviour, there're a lot of theories, there's a lot of mythology around it ... And I didn't want to contribute to that kind of stigma, but I also wanted to be truthful about what the experience is.

"It can be incredibly harmful behaviour, it can cause a lot of injury and poor health and family trauma and all that kind of stuff, so I wanted to be true to that."

She spent a long time on her Charles Perkins application, not knowing whether hoarding was the type of medical condition they had in mind when they put out a call for writers. But by the time she had finished the application, she knew she would go ahead with the book, whether she got the residency or not (she did).

"[The residency] certainly gave me confidence in really understanding, as much as anyone understands, some of the things behind this kind of behaviour, and some of the ways that it expresses itself," she says.

The book opens with Nic coming across a pristine white doll's bonnet in the street; she picks it up and takes it home, where she treats it with reverence, searching for the perfect place to put it. It's clear from the opening pages that Nic has a certain relationship with things - they have feelings, and character, and need to be put in special places, even if it means being crowded into ever-shrinking spaces with many, many other things that also need nurturing.

Through the course of her fellowship, Maguire spent time with both doctors and therapists dealing with people with hoarding disorder, but also people who themselves were suffering. It was a fascinating and complex window into all sorts of lives being lived out against many different backdrops, most of which contain unwieldy piles of things many would consider junk. Rubbish. Excess of one kind or another.

"I also got introduced to some self-help groups, which is quite rare because very few people self-identify as hoarders," she says.

"That was quite difficult, but it was sort of a process of building trust and them understanding what I was doing, and that I was very meticulous in not using any specific examples or stories in the book."

Of course, certain themes emerged that she couldn't help including; newspapers was one, a fear of letting go was another.

"One of the big things that sort of differentiates people with hoarding behaviour or hoarding disorder is that they can't let go of things, which is you know how the hoard happens," she says.

"But I think way, way more people have the thing of accumulating stuff - that's a much more common behaviour.

"I certainly know people who [go to] two-dollar shops - or incredibly expensive shops if they're wealthier - just accumulating. It's just they don't have that same issue. If... it's a gift, or they give it away, or every now and then they have a big [Marie] Kondo and clean everything out, they don't have that same emotional feeling and attachment to the items."

The problem is when objects become so imbued with meaning and memory that letting them go feels like cutting off a limb, or losing a part of oneself. And so those piles of newspapers, bags of clothes, boxes and bundles and stacks, become totems for something others don't see.

When Lena, Nic's niece, is confronted with the horror of seeing the inside of her house for the first time, she reacts with clear-eyed, even cold, pragmatism. She sees a giant, surmountable problem, where Nic sees a fortress of safety, a house filled with comfortable old friends.

"Hoarding behavior is a lot more varied than most people understand so it's obviously not the same for everyone," Maguire says. "I was fortunate enough to speak to a lot of people and one of the more common things [is] to worry about the objects and to feel bad...

"That was one of the most beautiful things that I realised in talking to people. I would be in this room where, when I first walked in, it just looks like stuff, I can't see what anything is, and then you'll ask about an object, and the person will tell you a story about it, about the day they got it, and it's this perfect memory ... They'll point to something and say, 'Look at this beautiful stitching'.

"Really valuing not just the thing itself but what it represents in terms of the care that other people have taken, I just find that really moving."

Moving is the word. Love Objects is filled with moments liable to cause readers' eyes to brim. The image of Nic stroking a blouse she wore as a teenager, when kissed by a boy she loved, is almost too much to bear.

"The other thing with objects is, they don't leave you, and they don't contest your memories," she says. "And so when they're gone, it's like that experience is gone too, in a way."