Inventory of Objects for Summer Relocation to New York City

DATE: May 25, 2014
LOCATION: Winston-Salem, NC

Over several days, I made a mental list of things I wanted to pack, and I wrote the really important things down. Then I started to pack my car. I was moving from my house to a small dorm room in New York for three months. The room had a desk, a dresser, a bed, a bookshelf, and an armchair.

Outline of some things I brought:

Three rugs, one large and two small
Fan from a San Juan, Puerto Rico souvenir shop
Four throws in different prints
Five scarves
White IKEA side table with removable legs
Vintage yellow ashtray in moon-like shape
Deck of cards
Laptop and external hard drive
Yellow papier-mache Day of the Dead skull
Greeting card depicting three skeletons
Five tote bags of books, including Whitman, de Beauvoir, Homer, Dinesen, Melville, and old travel guide to Paris
Three throw pillows: two crocheted, one cotton
Bar accoutrements, including five bottles of booze and two bottles of bitters, two tumblers, two etched coupe glasses, two large wine glasses, crystal cocktail mixer, jigger, long mixing spoon, and paper napkins in red-and-white picnic pattern
Tray depicting a brain according to phrenology
White noise machine
Coney Island snow globe
New York City snow globe
Eleven DVDs, mostly Katharine Hepburn and Busby Berkeley films
Small Chinese cat figurine
Kitchen stuff, including a good-sized pot, cast iron pan, sharp knife, coffee maker, four plates and bowls, two teacups, diner-style, and my mug from a retro pancake house
Six paintings, one large and five small – two of Paris and one purchased in the French countryside and done by a local artists who was dead
Three pens and three notebooks: one full, one started, and one still empty
Miscellaneous photographs and postcards of authors and old Hollywood stars
One large polka dot suitcase filled with clothing
Bedding: two pillows, comforter and sheet set, quilt
Jewelry, but not too much
Eiffel Tower figurine
Vintage tiki vase from Harvey’s Casino Tahoe
Empty Café Bustelo can for flowers
Talavera tiles to use as coasters
Two votives and bag of tea lights
Two boxes of matches from the Missouri Athletic Club
Vintage train case filled with toiletries
Tapestry for the wall

Outline of some things I need:

Garbage can and garbage bags
Bar of soap
Cutlery (apartment only has one knife, one fork, and two spoons)
Pants hangers, maybe ten or so
Nails
Sewing kit
Groceries (pasta, sauce, cereal, milk, coffee)
Bodega flowers, possibly pink carnations

Susan Harlan is an English professor at Wake Forest University, where she specializes in Renaissance literature. Her non-academic writing focuses on the intersections between place, objects, and memory. Her essays have appeared in Nowhere, Skirt!, Public Books, Literary Mothers, Artvehicle, Cocktailians, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Open Letters Monthly. Her online travel diary Born on a Train, which narrates a long-haul Amtrak trip she undertook in full 1950s dress – complete with hats and vintage luggage – is about old-school train travel, and she has a monthly column for Nowhere magazine entitled “The Nostalgic Traveler”.