Throwaway

Rubbish can be beautiful. Greenbelt 2014.

I'm moving house at the minute.

A bit about me: an organisational control-freak who believes that everything has to have its particular place in a dwelling.

A bit about house-moving: a horrendously disorganised chaotic happening where everything is uprooted and put into boxes, leaving dwellings in disarray.

It's an understatement to say that house-moving is one of my least favourite things to do.

This will be my fourth London house-move over the past two years, and it gets harder every time as I acquire more stuff and need more boxes. At this stage people tell me: "just get rid of it, you can always buy more (toilet roll, tea bags, photo frames) if necessary."

And here's my problem. It's not the throwing things away (I'm really good at being ruthless), but the mentality that we can just buy more. Stuff isn't built to last. Possessions aren't meant forever.

And I struggle with the throwaway culture that I've been sucked into because it doesn't seem fair that I just chuck away anything remotely unnecessary while a much larger majority of the world are crying out for essentials. The inequality all over our globe strikes me, yet again, as I realise just how many possessions I own (and how many I throw away).

I'm going to try to stop being so throwaway. That means that I'm going to use the things I keep meaning to rather than keeping them on a dusty shelf. It means wondering if my old clothes could be reused or worn by others. It also means thinking about food packaging and refusing to buy those ridiculous ready meals with plastic, cardboard and everything else on the outside.

And, if nothing else, I'm going to stop complaining about house-moving and be thankful for the dwellings I've been fortunate to live in.

Throwaway: "a thing intended to be discarded after brief use."