I used to own two cars – one that I kept in London, the other in Ireland – but last year I sold them both. They were useful on occasion and one of them was enjoyable to drive, but I did not use either of them often and the cumulative cost of buying them, taxing them, insuring them, paying for parking permits, servicing them, and repairing them when they broke down, became disproportionate to the benefits I derived from my ownership of them. From an economic point of view, it made sense to sell them and make use of rental cars when needed, thus saving significantly on operating expenses. From an environmental point of view, it also made sense because now I use public transport or walk more often, reducing by a little the global rate of consumption of fossil fuels.
Living in London without a car is very practical, not just because the city has plenty of public transport options and is comfortably walkable. There is also a very good car-sharing club to which I belong. If I need to use a car or a van for any reason, I can book online and pay an hourly rate (which varies from around £9 to £15, depending on the day, the time, and the type of vehicle) or a daily rate. The club has parking bays all over the city and the vehicles are booked and accessed using a phone app, which make the process very convenient. Last weekend I hired a van for three hours, to move some large items – a few paintings, some large terracotta pots, and a desk – from the flat I have been renting temporarily to the property I bought earlier this year, which is currently being renovated. This weekend, I booked a car for three hours to move some smaller items – my desktop computer, printer, CD player and miscellaneous other items – in preparation for moving into my new home. I have temporary need of the use of a van and a car because I am in transit.
Moving house is an equivocal experience. To some extent it involves a series of rather boring but necessary tasks, such as switching utility providers and organising the removals process, which can become stressful if one of the parties involved fails to do what they promised to do, at the time and date they indicated. It also offers the opportunity to sort through my belongings and to reconsider which objects are important and which are surplus to requirements. It is an excuse to acquire some new appliances and a chance to divest oneself of goods I no longer have use for. I intend to use the moving process as an opportunity to give away or recycle a proportion of my “stuff” and thenceforth to live with fewer possession. Over the next few weeks, I will discover how well that plan works out.
I have no desire to reduce the number of books I own. Indeed, one of the great pleasures of moving into my new property will be the slow process of unpacking my numerous boxes of books and organising them on my newly purchased bookcases. There is a delightful essay by Walter Benjamin, written in 1931, called “Unpacking my library”, which describes the bibliophilic pleasure of remembering how and when certain books were acquired, as they are removed from the packing boxes and placed on the empty shelves that await them. I would like to skim read that essay again now and quote a few phrases from it. However, one of the two books that I own in which the essay is published is packed up in a box in the room next door and the other is in a different box, in a storage facility a few kilometres from here. I will have to wait until I have unpacked my library before I can re-read Benjamin’s account of the unpacking of his library ninety years ago.
Another pleasure that awaits me in my new home is figuring out how to organise the hanging of my collection of paintings and prints. I have quite a few pictures, most of which have been in storage for a while, and I plan to spend some time working out how best to display them. Some choices will be determined by the spaces available – big paintings can only be hung on big walls, whereas smaller prints and drawings could be hung in various locations – but I also want to make sure that my favourite objects are placed where I will be able to enjoy them regularly and in comfort. In addition, I will have to consider the way my different artworks fit together in the space. I have a friend, with considerable expertise in hanging exhibitions, who has promised to come and help me. We will argue a little about the best location for each work, and he will want to hang everything slightly lower than I would prefer, but eventually we will come to an accommodation. Once the walls are full, and the precise position of each work has been carefully checked with a spirit-level, then we will be able to share the aesthetic pleasure of good art over a glass or two of good wine.
For the first few weeks, my new home will lack a working kitchen. The appliances are all there, but the company who are designing and making the units and worktop have been busy and are not able to install them until late-September. I have prior experience of the company and the quality of their work is very good, so I am happy to wait a few weeks for my beautifully designed and well-made kitchen to materialize. It will be a pleasure to unpack my pans, utensils, crockery, knives, and cookery books. I am looking forward to October when I can start making meals again for friends in a spacious and well organised environment. Once my kitchen is operational and my bookshelves are stacked with books, then I will feel that my move is complete. As Gertrude Stein once wrote, “books and food, food and books, both marvellous things”. Like me, she had a great art collection too.
Aside then from my kitchen equipment, books, and pictures, I intend to de-clutter. My new property has ample light and space, and I am keen to avoid over-filling it with objects. There are a few things I need: a desk, a couple of comfortable chairs for reading, good lamps, a sofa-bed for when guests stay for a night or two, some storage for clothes, and cupboards for cleaning materials. Then there are lots of things which are not strictly necessary to keep but are hard to throw away for sentimental reasons: rugs, vases, boxes of photos and mementos, and programmes from opera and theatre performances. Some were gifts from friends, others remind me of the time and place I bought them, and others are – from time to time – useful to have. My sense, however, is that we tend to err on the side of keeping too much, and recycling too little. I will, therefore, make a concerted effort to divest myself of much that is inessential and inconsequential.
One thing I know for sure, I have too many clothes. I no longer need to wear suits for work as regularly as I once did, but I am loath to give these away since they were all made for me and are of very good quality. I might wear each one of them only once every two years, but they remain a valued element of my wardrobe. By contrast, I have too many formal shirts and ties and think I could reduce my holdings by at least fifty percent. I will not find it easy to donate them to a charity shop, but I know that I am unlikely to wear many of them again. I also have a variety of casual clothes that I have acquired over the years that I wear rarely and could easily forego. It will seem hard to give them away, but once they are gone, I suspect that I will not miss them. I also have more shoes than I need but reckon that the smartest strategy is to wear them out, pair by pair, as I walk around London, and then throw them away without needing to replace them.
If all goes to plan, I will gradually unpack my belongings over the autumn, keeping what is essential and most desirable, disposing of what is no longer required, thereby reducing the volume of objects in my home. I think this process will be good for me and will preserve the sense of light and space that makes my new home so appealing. On the other hand, I also recognise that many people in the world earn their living by making things: if we were all to buy less stuff, and to re-use and recycle more, then the demand for new stuff would fall and unemployment would rise. Some of these workers will be able to move into different occupations, providing services rather than making goods – as society gradually moves away from prioritising the collection of objects and instead focuses on the accumulation of experiences – but not all workers will manage to make that transition. It would be a great shame if the craft skills associated with bespoke wool suits, designer silk ties, and elegant leather shoes were to die out completely. Nonetheless, I have no real need to contribute any longer to the demand for these goods, therefore I will absent myself from the point of marginal consumption, and instead become a supplier to the preowned marketplace.
Spending more time working on improving the quality of my life – good books and food, travel to interesting places, art galleries, time with friends, walking up hills, and sitting in a few board meetings of social sector organizations – seems much more worthwhile than spending money on increasing the quantity of objects in my home. In the end, for sure, death erases our memories as well as our inventories, but during life how we live is more important than how much we own. Moving home is the perfect time to remind myself of the truth of Thomas à Kempis’s famous phrase, O quam cito transit gloria mundi [“Oh how quickly the glory of the world passes away”].