Packing

We're moving to our new house one week ago - so I spent the weekend packing. There’s so much to do!

Many people have suggested professional removalist - who come in, pack EVERYSINGLETHING into boxes, haul it all to the new place, unpack, then leave with a couple of hundred bucks. Sigh. It sounds like a hassle-free solution. But I have a real problem with strangers touching my stuff. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of my friends and family looking and sorting through my things.

So yes, we’re doing it the old fashion way. Pack everything into boxes. Label them. And those who want to help can move them to and from the truck.

Anyway. I used to make junk furniture art when I was a teenager. And I still have boxes and boxes and boxes of string, nails, bits of cardboard, wire, straw, gauze, sticks, feathers, ribbons, beads, rocks, different coloured sand, material scraps, empty film canisters, old batteries, broken bits of plastic mechanical things (clocks, radios, computer parts, heaters, toys, kitchen appliances), etc. And I keep them because I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I desperately need 16 yellow ping pong balls…

I also wrote letters before I went cyber. So I have many shoe boxes full of letters, Christmas and birthday cards.

I also can’t bear to throw away my old clothes! I swear my late 90s tencel jeans will come back in fashion.

But what I love doing most is collecting objects which remind me of certain places and moments in life. I have rocks from Islands. Pebbles from Australia. A chopstick holder in shape of a naked lady I stole from a Chinese restaurant where I was the photographer at my friend’s wedding reception. The neatly folded gift wrapping of a present given to me by my first boyfriend.

Someone once told me , aside from ‘death of a loved one’ and ‘divorce’, ‘moving houses’ is one of the most stressful things one can experience in life. And in true Jessica form, I’m secretly striving to prove them otherwise.