Cachureo
Junk, odds and ends — the useless stuff filling a Chilean drawer or garage.
Related lesson: Chilean Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
El closet está lleno de cachureos.
The wardrobe is full of junk.
Voy a botar todos estos cachureos.
I'm going to throw out all this clutter.
Me compré un cachureo en la feria.
I bought some knick-knack at the street market.
What It Actually Means
Cachureos are odds and ends — junk, clutter, bits and pieces that nobody will throw away. The word can be dismissive (the garage is full of them) or fond (the little thing you bought at the feria and love).
Where It Comes From
From cachureo, related to the Chilean cacharro family and ultimately to cacharro, an old pot or piece of crockery. Chile also has el cachureo as a mass noun for a whole jumble, and cachurear — to rummage through it.
How Natives Use It
Most often plural, most often about the house. If you take a room apart on a Sunday, you are cachureando. And a whole generation hears the word as the name of a famously chaotic children’s TV programme, which fixed the sense of joyful clutter in the national ear.
Common Pitfall
The equivalents elsewhere are trastos or cacharros in Spain, chécheres in Colombia. Don’t confuse it with the verb cachar behind ¿cachái? — same first syllable, unrelated word.