I thought I was a minimalist until I moved across the pond.

In the final few days before we left London, what to do with the random assortment of remaining posessions bothered me most. The stuff that had escaped the charity shop, the recycling bin, or the vicious boxing and taping of the movers. A 1970s enamelled cooking pot of my grandmother’s patterned with orange and brown flowers. My favourite mug. My old Mac circa 2002 (it still contains five years of my life in pictures which I’ve never got round to rescuing).

I listen to The Minimalists podcast and evangelise about their principles. I devoured Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying (Hail, sushi rolled socks!) and Stuffocation, buying friends extra copies with the enthusiasm of a clumsy, giant-pawed puppy. I’m addicted to George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (and now the Tiny House Big Living show on HGTV in the U.S.) and the idea of small space living, a simpler life.

And I thought I had transformed myself - after all, two full car loads of stuff went to the nearby Shelter charity shop, our sofa, car, sizeable stash of white decorating paint, cast iron frying pan and garlic press shaped like a toucan went to keen friends. I recycled a small rainforest of paperwork, old Christmas and Birthday cards, university notes I no longer understand, half-filled sketchbooks, comedy tickets and Paris Metro cards. I chucked out vast amounts of old shoe polish, photo corners, exotic fruit tea and a George Foreman grill.

On our last night, we sat on the floor in our bare living room eating fish and chips with my parents and four friends. We ate from borrowed plates, serving bowls and a saucer, drank our last remaining bottles of wine and played cards with an old pack of Happy Families once played by my grandfather as a boy. The classic Jaques one, with grim Victorian illustrations - Mr Bung the Butcher, with his crimson nose and barrel body, Mrs Grits the Grocer’s wife with her stout legs and lardy bosom. We laughed and argued, and drank more wine. It was magical.

We arrived in New York at the end of February and I spent the first five weeks happily living out of a suitcase. The only things I missed were my own pillow, pictures to hang on the walls, and a pair of running shorts as the weather yoyoed from snow to balmy sun. I found myself working every night on art projects, inspired by the possibilities of a small pencil case and a pad of black sugar paper, no longer constrained by the opressive feeling of overflowing drawers of paints and cupboards of fabric scraps and half-finished dresses. I felt more creative than I had in years. I felt free.

But my parents had waved us off from London with a car full of things to store at their house, things that I couldn’t bring myself to part with. And somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean was a shipping container filled with all the rest. The things I thought I needed. The forgotten things that, on moving day, rudely kept spilling out from cupboards long after they should have been empty.

As the date for our stuff to arrive came closer, I couldn’t remember any more what it all was. Instead of the excitement I thought I’d feel, I was nervous and anxious about sorting through everything, where to put things in an apartment already full with our landlords’ posessions. It all felt wrong. I realised that although I aspired to lead a minimalist lifestyle, I was still far from it.

Moving shocks you to see the raw truth about the entirity of your stuff. It turns all those memories and treasures into soulless volume. Boxes to be weighed, measured, stored, transported. Seeing all our things as boxes made me feel differently about them. The experience of moving has forever changed my perspective on the things I own.