I have many subs that effectively do exactly the same thing, but to a different variable. I would like to have the logic happening in only one sub, and the others using that to do the work.

What the two methods have in common is that they add things to lists. The lists are different. Adding things to lists is a pretty generic operation. You gain little by factoring out the list-adding code into a separate method.

What you can do is simplify. Instead of writing

    for (@_) {
        push @{$self->{column}}, $_;
    }
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write     push @{$self->{column}}, @_; That reduces the amount of shared code (in lines) by 66%. Then, is it really worth creating a new method because two methods each have a single line of code that sort of looks the same? The effect would be to add lines of code, for no gain in functionality. That seems to me to be a step in the wrong direction.