Moving and Dispossession
(updated July 2026)
Tomorrow, I'm moving.
Everything is packed, labeled, piled up. Looking at these forty boxes, I realize that I probably never bought as many things as in 2015. We had more space, an empty apartment to fill for two, so we bought furniture for every room.
We reused very little, because I wanted, as they say in interior design, to highlight the volume of the rooms without distorting them. A rather elegant way of saying that I wanted to fill the void with new things.
I had forgotten one important detail: by then, I had already been moving about once a year for nearly ten years. I was not a seasonal worker. I simply like to change places, atmospheres, and ways of living. Sometimes alone, sometimes two, three, four, or five in shared accommodation. Often in Grenoble, a city I still love so much, sometimes back to the countryside.
When I look at all these boxes, I think of Alex, a seasonal cook who transported his whole life in two large suitcases. He must have had a secret. Where do I put it, my guitar? And my kite? What about the microwave and the television?
I smiled when I noticed how possessively Western my thinking had become.
In recent months, I had started to experiment with other ways of living. Béa Johnson's zero waste, Marie Kondo's decluttering, lending, giving. I had always struggled to lend my things, yet I had reached the point where I wanted everything I did not use to circulate.
Every time I prepared a bag to leave for a few days, the same realization came up: I could do without almost everything I own. A pair of shoes, a few thongs, a warm sweater, a computer, and I was ready to go.
What I really wanted might not be to live with fewer objects. I wanted to be able to leave easily.
There is something quite reassuring in a full house. Everything seems settled, stable, meant to last. But the more you own, the more complicated every departure becomes. You have to store, transport, protect, maintain. Objects eventually start influencing decisions we believe we are making freely.
I don't know if a house ends up owning us. But I know that forty boxes are seriously starting to negotiate.
Tomorrow, I'm moving. I don't know what the rest will be like, and that is probably what I like the most.
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