On moving

Faced with packing ones stuff away to move it is so tempting to throw everything out and start again with the bare essentials, (of course we’ll all argue about what is really essential) however that seems just a little wasteful if not buying in to the consumerist trend.  What we did do, was get rid of the rubbish, and the stuff that never really got unpacked from the last move, taking with us what we thought was a more streamlined selection of ‘stuff’.  Of course now the unpacking has almost finished, were left with pretty much what we had before.

I have a better notion, perhaps I’ll adhere to it next time…  Pack carefully.  Label each box, not just to its room or function, i.e. ‘kitchen’ or ‘books’ but closely to what it contains so that in six months if you need the widget for unwinding the sprocket on a push-bike you know which box it’s in!  Then comes the move.  And here is the important bit.  DON’T UNPACK!  Leave the carefully labeled boxes in the rooms to which they belong.  When you need something, get it out of the box, when you are finished, put it away in its new home.  Eventually and probably quite quickly, especially in the kitchen some boxes will empty, but others will not.  After six months, anything that is left goes to the charity shop or to be recycled because if in six months you have not needed it, it is probably that you won’t for the following six months or years thereafter!  On reflection, there is of course no need to move house to do this, just a lot of boxes – the boxes we have, the will to do it however…