Just a few days ago, I moved out of my apartment following my sophomore year of college. I packed all of my stuff into boxes, bags and mostly big plastic totes. When I got home, I only had a few days to spend relaxing at my house before I needed to pack up and move to another state for a summer REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates). I just finished packing for ten weeks away from home, and what I found was most of my stuff was already packed in my plastic totes from my apartment: the clothes I’ve been collecting since high school, my shoes, all my bathroom stuff, bedding, pretty much everything I own. I said to my mom, “I’m live my whole life out of totes.” And she said something about how if I wrote an autobiography, it would be called “My Life in Plastic Totes.” I laughed, but I then I got to thinking about it.
She’s right. Almost everything I own is kept in totes. When I exchange my winter clothes for summer clothes when I come home for spring break, I leave all the winter stuff in totes under my bed. When I’m at school, I’ve kept clothes, dishes, kitchen supplies, and even food in plastic bins. I’m constantly shuffling my stuff between different plastic bins as I move from home to school, back to home, to summer experiences, and back home again. I can’t own or transport anything fragile because it’s likely to get broken.
I’ve been thinking lately about the permanence of my life. It’s weird, the things you find yourself missing as you grow up and move away from home. What I really miss is having a place where I can put all my stuff, where it’s accessible, and doesn’t have to move constantly. Right now, it feels like my life is a river that’s always flowing forward. It’s like I’m in a small boat, floating down this river. As it flows faster and faster, I’m forced to throw more things overboard. I constantly have to decide what possessions are most important, which ones are worth taking with me as I move forward in life. Ever since I started college, I never get to stay any one place too long before it’s time to move and go somewhere else. I never get to truly settle in. There is never time or even a reason to unpack all my plastic totes, to have all of my possessions out and in a proper place. It’s beginning to feel like home is just wherever I put my plastic storage containers down. It feels like all I ever do is partially unpack them before it is time to pack them back up, leave, and go somewhere else. Sometimes I wonder if there is ever even a point to unpacking them in the first place.
However, I refuse to believe that home is wherever my totes are. Any place where you have to live out of plastic boxes is no home. Someday, I’ll find a place of my own, somewhere more permanent where I can unpack all my possessions, set them up on proper shelves, cabinets, and drawers. To me, a home is somewhere that feels comfortable, a home base where I can keep my stuff, a location where I return to relax and unwind. I look forward to the day when “My Life in Plastic Totes” is no longer my autobiography, but a memoir of my past.
