Here is my code. I'd suggest skipping down the the question at the very end first, so you know what part of the code to look at. The first file is lib/MyHolder.pm:

{
  use strict;
  package MyHolder;
  use Moose;

  has 'name'   => (is => 'rw', isa => 'Str');
  has 'things' => (is => 'rw', isa => 'ArrayRef');
}
1;
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The second file is t/test_holder.t, which exercises the MyHolder object a bit.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use lib 'lib';

use strict;
use warnings;

use MyHolder;
use Test::More tests => 7;

BEGIN { use_ok( 'MyHolder' ); }
require_ok( 'MyHolder' ) or exit;

my @temp = ();
my $cup_holder = MyHolder->new();

# name
$cup_holder->name("cupboard");
is ($cup_holder->name(), "cupboard",
   "name of cup holder should be cupboard");

# things
my @cups = qw(blue green green yellow);
$cup_holder->things(\@cups);
@temp = @{$cup_holder->things()};
is (scalar @temp, 4, "there should be four things in the cupboard");

# add an element to the array... you've got to be kidding me
# push($cup_holder->things(), "red");
@temp = @{$cup_holder->things()};
push(@temp, "red");
$cup_holder->things(\@temp);
@temp = @{$cup_holder->things()};
is (scalar @temp, 5, "there should be five things in the cupboard");

# remove the last element from the array... (!)
# my $thing = pop $cup_holder->things();
@temp = @{$cup_holder->things()};
my $thing = pop @temp;
$cup_holder->things(\@temp);
@temp = @{$cup_holder->things()};
is (scalar @temp, 4, "there should be four things in the cupboard");
is ($thing, "red", "the cup should be red");
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Allow me to direct your valuable attention to the last two sections, headed by comments 'add an element' and 'remove an element'. The commented-out lines with simple push() and pop() show what I would *like* to do; the ones below that are what I seem to have to do. The code runs fine; it just seems ugly to have to use a temp array here. Is this really the best way? Please say no.

P.S. There are some MooseX modules like MooseX::AtributeHelpers that offer more options (and lots more arcane programming theory buzzwords, too, not that that's a bad thing). And I definitely will explore those modules. But at the same time I'm still wondering what are the good (simple, short, elegant) ways to work with arrays just with Moose and without extension or experimental modules.