The Move

Apparently there are three lessons in life that I will simply never learn: nobody wants to hear Christmas songs in October, electrical equipment will not “eventually just fix itself”...and you can never underestimate how much crap you can accumulate while residing in one place for eight months.

It’s the latter of these which concerns me most today. Or, more accurately, three weeks ago - when I awoke to the realisation that in three hours Mum would be here to help us move house and I’d passed out the night before in an alcohol-induced state of certainty that I really didn’t have much to pack.

The only preparations we’d actually made involved picking up three Walkers-branded cardboard boxes from Somerfield, throwing all expired items out of our fridge and writing an extensive list of everything we own, grouped according to box size. Which is why we found ourselves at 8.45am, frantically stuffing bra padding, wet towels and beautifully ironed shirts into black bin bags.

By 10:30am the flat looked like an industrial waste site and we’d already navigated more pitfalls than were necessary. We hit the first of these when I assembled one of the flat-packed Somerfield boxes only to watch it immediately crumple to the floor. Unsurprising, given that there was no tape holding it together. Even after a quick dash for brown tape, it took three attempts to pack our crockery into one precariously assembled box - the final attempt being thwarted when we attempted to move it, to no avail, given that it contained every item of kitchenware we owned aside from two spatulas and a set of scales. Ah.

But after some skilled Tetris-style attempts at filling the boot of Mum’s Renault Scenic, followed by three trips to Earlsfield, we found ourselves in our lovely new front room, dwarfed by a mountain range of suitcases and trying to decide where to point our furniture in the absence of a TV.

The prospect of unpacking is always a little daunting considering the amount of time it took to pack (or the time it would take to pack properly – bin bags and bra flinging excluded). The sensible starting point was obviously clothes or kitchenware – something big which would clear a lot of space. So naturally we began with photo frames and candles. Well, it’s our natural female instinct as homemakers to create a comfortable and welcoming environment. If we’d been men, I’m sure we would have gone straight for the bedroom. Or the bathroom – they can be very precious about their washbags.