Today I moved house. I will be unpacking my life for the remainder of the week, with the help of an incredibly handy brother who can build bookshelves out of string. Marie Kondo I am not: I put far too much in storage, and 15 months on, I am questioning my useless packing decisions.
There are Blackstone bags aplenty, and tonight I will be showering with a Blackstone beach towel as it is the only one I have found so far. The first useless item I’ve unearthed is an air hockey table, still in its original packaging. A Canadian colleague brought this for a gift exchange at a Blackstone Christmas party. I delightedly won the set, surprised that it happened without any competition from my colleagues. It remains unopened and unplayed.
I also have a mysterious attachment to Harvard items. There are bags, hats, sweaters, gilets, leggings, trackpants, pennants, stoles, toys, all emblazoned in crimson and H. I have the Harvard/Yale game bottle opener, and a flier with the runsheet for the events that day. I shipped multiple boxes of my scribbled class papers from Boston three years ago. They remain in their original shipping boxes. They may never see the light of day again.
An entire box is dedicated to clothes I had made from colourful local fabrics when I lived in Kenya. These outfits almost never reached me. They were shipped to the wrong address in Boston and remarkably the return to sender address landed it all the way back in Nairobi. The same mangled parcel made its way to the US with the corrected travel itinerary two months later. Unsurprisingly, none of the dresses fit. I keep them anyway, given the arduous journey they travelled around the world.
Not all the packing decisions were terrible. Betraying my Asian upbringing to British parents, my kitchen is already helpfully stocked with a large tub of Mae Ploy Thai Green Curry Paste, oyster sauce and English Breakfast tea. Amongst the collection are cute doggy clips for keeping food fresh, leftover from a motherly visit in 2022.
These weird possessions reveal parts of me. I love free stuff and try to avoid waste, to the chagrin of my friends when I say no to plastic bottles or carry-bags. In lieu of boxes and buying new towels, I collect and re-use my corporate swag. I valued my education, and aspirationally want to revisit the learnings from these classes, but new books and experiences take precedent. Collecting niche cooking ingredients for takes years, and I couldn’t bear to part with my essentials for Asian cooking.
My writing will probably be short and light-hearted this week as I juggle moving and work assignments. Inspiration is likely to be confined to the apartment. However, there are so many stories that have unfolded just from a day of unpacking. I’m excited to try a bit of a different writing style this week as I ease into feeling like a real Londoner again.
Your storage goals sound like Papa's, seems like you learned from the best. And you have a gifted vintage Moghul table on its way from the Sunshine Coast.