My life in boxes

For three weeks I've been gradually clearing out and packing up the material accumulations of 29 and a half years in preparation for the move to Wollongong, which will happen on Monday 25^th January. It has been an exhausting but strangely enjoyable activity in a 'trip down memory lane' kind of way. I found many things I was surprised that I had kept: speeches I made in primary school and high school, meticulously handwritten out on tiny 'palm cards'; a diary I kept very sporadically (a total of about 5 entries!) between the ages of about 10 and 12; school assignments I must have been particularly proud of; a 'time capsule' scrapbook my high school friend and I wrote along with our sisters when we were about 13 or 14; a heap of train tickets dated from the mid nineties to the early noughties; a collection of coasters from various pubs visited between the ages of about 18 and 20; and many other things that have already blurred into a mass of forgettable articles. I've kept some of the things that I thought might interest me in the future as evidence of what things I had thought about in my earlier years and what my writing style had been like (ever the linguaphile!), but with the rest of the paper matter I filled two yellow-lidded recycling bins!

Now I have a large number of boxes stacked up in the lounge room, marked according to how soon I'm likely to need them. I'm moving into a furnished 2 bedroom granny flat so a lot of it I won't need while I'm living there. Those boxes are marked 'STAY', and they'll hang around at my family home until I move into more permanent, unfurnished accommodation. Some are marked 'GO LATER', which means I'll bring them after the initial move if I find I need what's in them: extra bits of crockery. The rest are marked 'GO' – things like towels and sheets, food, clothes, cleaning stuff, decorative items to make the place feel like home, and of course the mix master and baking tins!

I'm looking forward to unpacking and putting things where I want them in the new place, and making it my own. It's a whole new adventure!