My muggle husband and I have started referring to ourselves as “gypsies”. We travel, we move house (a lot) and are rarely in one place for more than a year. While we don’t move around as often as some people I’ve met, I’m sure four moves within 18 months, and 11 moves within eight years are certainly up there.

We are currently finalising move no. 11, going from our two-bedroom Tardis (blue, and bigger on the inside) to a four-bedroom “slightly modernised fibro” with fantastic retro (original) green and orange carpet. We are slightly further west, and back within my muggle’s childhood stomping ground of Fairfield City Council.

We would love to give into the idea of gypsies more, moving job to job in a caravan, but after this move I highly doubt we’d be able to pull it off.

We simply have too much stuff.

Disregarding our furniture, at least a dozen Avon boxes of DVDs, four boxes of CDs, three laptops, all of my Pagan goodies, a few boxes of books, and my muggles PlayStation things…we’ve also discovered the true extent of my muggle’s wardrobe.

DVDs and CDs can go onto an external hardrive, books onto a kindle…but clothes?

Moving around so much, he’s always taken a selection of clothes with him. That was until we moved into the Tardis, and he gathered all of his clothes from his Nan’s. Now, especially with Nan having moved into a nursing home, we have to cart his wardrobe with us. All of it. The three large red/blue/white stripe plastic bags (with handles, all Aussies should know those bags!), the three boxes, the two bags of shoes, and two tubs.

In comparison, my clothes took up one box, two tubs, and I have no more than six pairs of shoes, including two pairs of thongs. And that was before I donated two large garbage bags to the local Salvos store.

I still have dreams of raising our children in a caravan, them running around in nappies at some caravan park, and sitting in their seat on the back of a bicycle as I ride into town for groceries. But until my muggle can learn to cull his clothing, and this is something I’ve been on him to do for a few years now, it will be forever a dream (until my body learns how to have children, it will be forever a dream!) He won’t cull, or at least chooses not to, because it’s very hard to find clothes that his body can tolerate. At least that’s the excuse. It’s gotten to the point where he’s bought every item of clothing that’s “comfortable” in the last few years, and hasn’t tossed anything out in return.

I’m not looking forward to move no. 12, whenever that will be. We’ve found such a great rental, only been here for three nights and already I can’t imagine moving. It’s not the greatest; the lino is ripped, the carpet is frayed, and I’m still discovering cockroach doors. I’m in a battle with myself, continuing the gypsy lifestyle versus settle-down-and-make-a-home.

I love the excitement leading up to moving – finding new rentals, discovering new suburbs or towns. It’s the cleaning and the actual moving that runs me down! If we had a caravan, it’s all there. I could force my muggle not to hoard, cleaning would take less than an hour, and we would discover new land energies. The Druid within is quite excited over that!

But our stuff, all of it, even the things I’m quite attached to…I love having a proper kitchen to cook in. I love having four burners that work, not relying on hotplates (we did that living at Nan’s, and it was awful). I love putting dirty clothes straight into the washing machine, and not having to wait for one to be free. I love having a chest of drawers, and not living out of a bag. Having a shower without having to wear thongs, midnight toilet runs in my undies, and walking about the house in a towel.

Maybe “Rental Gypsies” would be a better term for us, then?!