stuff

I'm about to move house. This will be my fifth move since last year, not including the two months I spent couch-surfing (another nine places). I've become notorious for it. People are either sick of hearing it or want to make jokes about how I must be cursed, which was funny until about two moves ago, when I started to wonder if it might actually be true. We agreed this new tenancy with three days to go on the current place, which hasn't helped my mental state or my writer's block in the slightest.

Back in the autumn I lived out of a suitcase for two months. I sent most of my possessions back to my parents and learned to live more minimally than I thought possible. I'm in no hurry to do that again, but looking around my room eight months later and seeing the amount of packing I'm going to have to do is a little intimidating. I moved into my last place with the suitcase and moved out having acquired bedding, sundries like cushions and mirrors that our landlord didn't want, and a sackful of clothes from my former housemate's periodic clearouts. In the six months I've lived here, I've accumulated a bewildering amount of stuff. I'm not even sure what most of it is, but I can see that it fills the room. And I have the big room.

Some stuff is understandable. A second set of bedding, extra towels. I bought a sleeping bag to go away with. A laundry bin and a desktop fan. None of this explains why my cupboards and drawers are full to bursting and the floor is covered in god knows what. There's no space under my bed. What is it? It can't all be clothes. I didn't think I even had that many clothes. Ripped tights and worn-through shoes, dancer casualties, that I haven't got round to throwing away? That's part of it, but how much space do tights take up? Hair paraphernalia, beauty products? I have a lot of that, but not a room's worth.

Most of it will probably turn out to be uncategorisable. Paperwork that seemed too important to throw out but not important enough to file away. Empty bottles that I thought were pretty. The tub of mini chocolate pumpkins that I've been carting about with me for ages. Things I acquired while drunk that I have no earthly use for but make me smile when I look at them. Small unidentified pieces of rubber or metal that look like they were part of something once, daring me to throw them out before I work out where they came from.

It's easy to build up this kind of collection when it sits quietly in your bedroom, not obviously worthless enough to spur on a decision to throw it away. It's one thing just to leave it where it lies, but it's quite another to pack it all up and lug it over to the other side of London, and I'm determined not to do that. I don't want to move into a new home and have it feel like a mess from the off, because on the basis of past experience I will look around, go, "Hey look, mess!" and proceed to throw junk food wrappers on the floor and sleep on a pile of clothes. I want to be able to make it look and feel like my space, and while I suppose cramming every surface with crap and leaving piles of clothes everywhere is a reasonably accurate representation of me, I'd like to have the option to do something else this time.

So my challenge is to throw things out. Not send it to be stored in someone else's house, actually get rid of it.

I know I have clothes I don't wear. Books I'll never read again. Mostly empty bottles. Shoes that hurt my feet. Information leaflets from old dance festivals that I have electronic copies of anyway. Boxes of Celebrations with just the Bounty bars left. Broken hair grips. Cables for products I don't even own anymore. I know I have things I don't even know I have. There are so many things in this room that I wouldn't miss if they vanished. I probably wouldn't even notice. But actively throwing it out feels different, like I'm callously rejecting that potential future situation when I will be in desperate need of a pair of awkwardly low-riding jeans with diamante on the back pockets (why on earth do I have these? Good grief). It's a block I'm going to have to get over, because this stuff really can't come with me.

This'll be interesting.