In the last decade, I’ve moved homes more times than I’d like to count, and I consider myself a good, if a little over-methodical, packer. I’ve never had anything fragile break on me, partly because I know that the answer to the question, “Should I double-box?” is always yes, because if it was no, the question wouldn’t have been asked.

I take a long time to pack—days, even weeks, if I have it. Watching me go about it would drive most people crazy, given how inefficient I am ‑ walking up and down the house carrying one small item per trip, and spending a ridiculous amount of time just standing in the middle of the room staring at everything around me.

As I go, I often think about the other me ‑ the one further down in time who’ll be opening and emptying the very box I’m filling and taping shut. I wonder about him‑where exactly he’ll be, what he’ll be thinking and whether he’ll remember all the stress and worry that was worked in with all those carefully nestled items. My packing self thinks enviously about this person ‑ all safe at the other end of the journey, wherever that is: starting instead of ending, hunkering down instead of gathering up. All the stresses of travel are behind him ‑ the excess baggage, the airport transfers, the shipping agent communications, the customs bills. All he has to do is decide where everything goes.

It’s strange how, even though we returned to our home country, we didn’t feel we were back until our 32 cardboard boxes arrived through our front door. (Actually it was 31, we’re still waiting for that one missing box). Our house isn’t nearly ready, so we’re gradually and rather gingerly unpacking, greeting familiar possessions with little shouts of joy. It’s as if 31 boxloads of comforting old friends have joined us to help us settle in.

It was only when I started opening containers that I realised how much stress of the move I still carried with me. Yesterday I finally became that enviable me from down the line in time, wielding a knife and finding peace by liberating things from their safes of bubble wrap and packing peanuts. It was interesting to see how after just a month in India I was already more careful with materials ‑ not that I was careless in the US, but the easy availability and relatively low cost of things such as paper tape, bubble wrap and cardboard boxes, made one tempted to take the easy way, which is to buy rather than make do. Or, say, reach for the paper kitchen towels rather than look for the dishcloth (and then have to worry about washing it). I had returned in many small ways.

Possessed by a longing to be surrounded by the familiar, I started pulling out items, with even ladles bringing a pang of fond remembrance. And, as if I was a bird that was accumulating twigs and cotton, the desire to nest grew stronger with each thing that emerged. Enough of this itinerance, my brain and body shouted. Start weaving that new life, start making that new home.

When setting up, it’s always interesting to observe when the house starts to feel like a home. Is it when the music system is up and playing? Or when there’s a comfortable bed to sleep in? Or when the last of the boxes is emptied? Watching the order in which things are brought out of those cardboard boxes, it’s pretty clear where the heart of our home lies—in the ability of the kitchen to produce a morning cup of chai.

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in Bangalore, India.