Moving house can be a mine field, but there was one area that proved to be trickier than I thought. Acquiring boxes!
When I was a student I moved a number of times. In fact I think between the ages of 16 and 21 I moved nine times! Each time I had an inordinate amount of stuff. And considering every time except the last I was only moving one roomful of stuff, it always surprised me how much ‘stuff’ there was. I always got the job done though, albeit in a very small space of time and moving house became like second nature. Once when I was due to move on the last day of term I spent the night before that partying. I then had the roughest and smallest amount of time to pack all my university belongings and squeeze into my friend’s Citroen with four other girls. It was a nightmare. But I did it. Or the time when I fell out with a landlady over a mattress and stated I was moving house then and there. That was fun. Luckily I had a relation come and help literally carry all my belongings (clothing rail included) to my next destination, and move house I did indeed do.
In these instances however, I have somehow never had the foresight to actually buy any moving boxes. It was only recently that I, now a fully fledged adult with a job and children, thought about buying storage boxes when I planned my relocation from London. I guess the keyword here is planned. As you may have guessed planning a move was never previously my forte. However what I realised about this is that you lose things. Like the time when I forgot that I had stored some memory disks and a borrowed book in my landlady’s basement or when I left a broken laptop at another property. It is only now as an adult that I long for that laptop as it had many pictures on it from my university days that I’ll probably never see again. So with all this in mind when I began to plan my most recent move it was decided that I would do a proper house clearance so leaving something behind was unlikely. And I also began to think about storage, so that I would have a special place to keep my memories.
Previously when moving house any boxes that I had used would have been obtained from my wondering around the local shops and essentially begging for unwanted boxes. It often proved fruitful but there was a certain objectionable element to walking around with half crumpled, slightly sagging boxes under your arm. Now a fully formed pragmatist, at this stage not only was planning a major factor but so was pride. Yes I was too proud to do a supermarket sweep on a quest for boxes. So I put my parsimonious thoughts aside and purchased two sets of ten boxes.
Once I assembled all my boxes it was a proud moment. Packing was that much easier in that I had somewhere to put things, and labelling was genius… my boxes actually came with a marker pen so now having moved, I can still get on with my life even though I haven’t entirely unpacked.
Moving house may not be fun, but moving house boxes can create a little sanity in an otherwise mad moment. And I guess in this scenario moving house has meant I have evolved, from care-free use, to a cost effective corrugated cardboard carrying adult!