Chitra Ramaswamy

IF YOU were to pack up the contents of your life, how many boxes would you need? Five? Fifty? Five hundred? I'm currently on 30 and counting, which is more than the Dalai Lama and less than Imelda Marcos. I reckon it's a number that, like baby bear's porridge or Sienna Miller's lovers, is just right.

My migration east has begun. The flats are bought and sold and my boxes and I are heading to the other side of the world, or rather from Glasgow to Edinburgh. And I'm realising that I haven't got that much to show for my 29 years on Planet Buy-It-Now-Or-Regret-It-Later.

Before you refer me back to those 30 boxes, let me point out that 28 of them contain books. Just books. Apparently I have no belongings outside the category of objects with pages and spines. And most of those spines aren't broken. It seems I just like looking at my books and once in a while picking them up, taking them somewhere else and putting them down again.

Aside from that, my stuff amounts to a load of empty CD boxes (the odd socks of the Noughties?), my favourite skinny jeans – if I pack them, what will I wear? – and 15,000 pairs of identical black M&S knickers. Is this it, I ask you? Surely I'm made of more – and better – stuff than this.

We started packing last week and have a fortnight to go. To be this organised is the absolute height of maturity, and a revelation. The move has been organised by my very Virgoan partner as, if it were left to me, I would spend the two weeks meticulously planning a grand, emotional leaving do; then the day after, hung over and with Patsy Cline playing for maximum effect, I would throw a few possessions into a pillowcase and trot off, Littlest Hobo-style.

You know you're all grown up when you hire removal companies instead of screwing it up yourself. Having been a tenant most of my adult life I've moved a lot, which is probably why I haven't got much stuff. I used to pack everything into a few boxes, closer to three than 30, and call a black cab. Yes, I moved house by taxi. This sounds ridiculous but trust me, it takes some ingenuity to get a Glaswegian taxi driver not only to take the boxes but to carry them inside for you too. Ah, the power – and idiocy – of youth.

Now that I'm officially an old person I plan to become a hoarder, the kind that would make my mother proud. Ma Ramaswamy keeps everything, even when she has three of the same. The idea is that if one breaks and the other gets lost (highly likely when there is a trio of everything), she's still covered. So far I've applied this approach to black M&S knickers… I think it's time to widen my horizons.