So Many Boxes, So Little Shelf Space

aka: an ode to the wooden floor and existential confusion

I am writing this while sitting cross-legged on my freshly laid, very adult, very wooden, and slightly creaky herringbone floor in central Stockholm. Yes, I bought an apartment. Yes, it came with its own “Welcome to Adulthood” badge – a pile of unpaid bills, an obscure Pinterest colour-design mood board, and the terrifying realization that I am now the person who owns a washing machine manual (which I am still figuring out).

I’ve officially entered the Great Box of Adulthood.

But here’s the thing: as I sit here among actual boxes –  taped, dented, dramatically labeled “KITCHEN (??)” and “ART? MAYBE?” and I realize these boxes are more than cardboard. They’re existential. They’re time capsules. They’re me.

One holds notebooks scribbled in three languages from a winter in Armenia. Another carries fragile Uzbek ceramics wrapped in woven wool from Afghanistan. Dual purpose: protect pottery, and beautiful memories of generous friends gifting me with fantastic pieces of warmth for future Sweden winter life. There’s the rug from Iran that smells faintly like home, and a miniature lamp I rescued from an Albanian flea market, because it “had potential,” unlike several of my exes.

And suddenly, I’m surrounded. Not just by the physical boxes, but by all the ones I’ve lived in.

The Young Artist Box. The Freelance-and-Free Box. The Nomadic Philosopher Who Sometimes Yells at People in Airports Box.
Also known as: the “I’m figuring it out” box.

 

But adulthood, it seems, wants tidier labels. People love a clear category. A LinkedIn headline. A predictable storyline. “You’re a homeowner now!” they say, like the plot twist has resolved. Puh – finally they can put me in one of the “real” boxes it seems. As if I’ve finally been filed into the appropriate drawer under “Functioning Human: Semi-Deluxe Edition” instead of the way-too-complicated “Delulu-Dramatic-Creative-Diplomat” one.

But what about all the versions of us that don’t fit so neatly? What about the in-between bits – the blurry identities, the languages half-spoken, the art half-finished, the dreams that change shape in transit?

What happens to all the other boxes?

There’s a strange pressure to unbox and organize everything. To make it presentable. To put the past in storage and hang new curtains of normality. To make it fit. But part of me wants to leave the boxes as they are, closed, messy, contradictory, full of stories I’m still figuring out.

Because maybe these boxes don’t just hold things. Maybe they make space. Space to remember, to question, to be multiple things at once.

And maybe (just maybe) it’s okay to live in a room full of boxes for some time. To sit with your life, stacked around you, and say: “I’m still unpacking.” Of course, this did also include a “I’m having my Carrie Bradshaw”- moment.

Not in a fabulous pair of Miu Mius (those are somewhere in the box “Dreams”, under the books I swear I’ll read again), but crouched on my new floor, squinting into the existential abyss that is… my wardrobe.

 

Trying to figure out how all of my clothes are going to fit into this adult-sized closet is like auditioning them for a reality TV show. Honestly, if I could design my life, this entire apartment would be a wardrobe. I’d have another space just to live in – to drink bubbles, to sing Iranian ballads loud enough for the neighbors to file a complaint, build emotional resilience, you know – the usual for a 30-something single-strong-independent-woman. But alas. Financial adulting. That’s for Chapter Two: IKEA Assembly & Emotional Flat-Packing. As I sort through these clothes, I realize I’m also trying to sort through selves,  the professional me, the private me, the grieving one, the ambitious one, the one who just wants to lie down in vintage silk and ignore deadlines. And there’s never quite enough closet space. 

Instead, I sit among the boxes. I open one, and suddenly I’m back in Istanbul – the light, the laughter, the quiet certainty that we’d never have to leave. I unwrap a delicate piece my best friend gave me, a small reminder of a time that still lingers. I hold it for a while… then carefully place it back inside.

I guess I’m not ready — not yet.

Some things are easier to carry when they stay in boxes. After all, we did leave –  even if a part of us never really packed up.

Meanwhile, on my laptop, “And Just Like That” plays in the background – a beautiful disaster of a reboot, but the outfits are still top-tier. I sip coffee and mutter, “Some things were better before”. Simply, the Sex and the City I grew up with. I nod at a fictional New York that never existed and feel a sting of how reality sometimes sneaks up on you, even in your living room. But then I look around, wondering: was everything better before? Was my never-ending suitcase closet really better? That rotating wardrobe of damp bags, rolled clothes, and lost earrings? No. At least now, these pieces – beautiful, strange, stubborn pieces of me – get the respect they deserve. Hung up. Honored. Given their little stage in the grand performance of adulthood.

Another box, I suppose. One lined with nostalgia and well-dressed illusions. But not all boxes are burdens. Some carry us. So maybe life isn’t about unpacking everything. Maybe it’s about knowing which boxes to keep open, and which ones you can close, gently, for now, and stack beside you like old friends.

Because identity, like fashion, is a rotating display. Some days you’re the confident homeowner with matching towel sets. Other days, you’re the wandering artist wrapped in a scarf that smells like another continent. Both are real. Both fit. Even if the boxes don’t fit everything the world wants them to. We don’t need to fit in any of them entirely. Maybe we just need to live among them, the memories, the stages, the pieces of ourselves we’ve collected and carried.

So here I am, surrounded by cardboard and closets, sitting cross-legged on my new floor, in a city I once hated and now have found my peace with, in a home I never thought I’d have – wondering if this is what settling down feels like.

Not static – not the kind of neatly labeled identity others are so relieved to assign you. Not the boxed-in feeling of being surrounded by your own history, taped shut and waiting for answers.

Just… gently stacked.

 

Not static. Not boxed in. Just… gently stacked.

For now. 

 

Pictures by Niusha Khanmohammadi