A Glossary of Moving House

I have moved seven times in ten years, between two cities on two continents, and somewhere around the fourth move I started keeping a list of words. Not new words, exactly. Ordinary words that change their meaning when you are packing a life into cardboard. Here they are, in alphabetical order, which is the only order that does not argue.

Box

A unit of time. Each box takes between eleven and forty minutes to pack, depending on whether it contains books or the contents of the bathroom cabinet. The last box always takes longest and always contains the same things: a phone charger, a single glove, a jar of paper clips and a letter you had forgotten about.

Deposit

A sum of money you will think about more often than you thought about your rent. It lives in someone else's account for the entire time you live in the flat, like a hostage you are not allowed to visit.

First morning

The morning you wake up in a new place and do not know, for about four seconds, where you are. It is the most honest moment of any move. After that, you start pretending you live there.

Forwarding address

An act of faith. You write it on a card, you give it to the post office, and for the next six months letters arrive from the life you left, a little late, like the light from a star.

Inventory

A document that describes your home entirely in terms of what is wrong with it. Read it on your first day and you will never quite see the rooms the same way again.

Keys

The only objects that change owner at the exact moment you move. Everything else, the furniture, the boxes, the plants, arrives in stages. The keys arrive all at once, and so, for a moment, does the fact that you live somewhere new.

Last night

The night before the van comes. You sleep on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by boxes, in a room that already sounds different because there is nothing on the walls. You will not sleep well. You will remember it for years.

Neighbour

A person you will either know very well or never meet, and it is impossible to tell which on the first day. The neighbour you meet on the stairs while carrying a box is not necessarily the one who will take in your parcels.

Tape

The sound of moving. If you close your eyes in a flat where someone is packing, you will hear it before anything else: the long tearing screech of a roll of parcel tape, again and again, like a bird that only knows one note.

Van

A vehicle that is always slightly too small. You will play a game of spatial reasoning in the street, at the worst possible time, while a man with a clipboard sighs.

Unpacking

A process that is never finished. There is always one box, somewhere, that stays closed. In my current flat it is at the back of the wardrobe. I know roughly what is in it. I have decided not to check.