Kirsty Bosley: I'm making a move and I've got so much stuff to get rid of

This year, as a bit of a change from not doing anything at all on those dead days between Christmas and the new year, I've decided to do something useful with my time. I'm not at work, so I should spend these days doing something productive, right?

Well, it turns out that what I've chosen to do is regarded by many as being more stressful than a relationship breakdown, going through divorce or starting a new job. I didn't really think this when I decided to do it – I thought I was doing the right thing.

We're moving house. Yes, we are packing up all of our worldly belongings into big see-through plastic boxes that reveal very clearly just how much rubbish defines our physical lives.

For the last four years, I have lived independently, filling the voids in my largely empty flat with stuff that I don't need. And really important stuff that I do need, like a selection of 1992 edition Hasbro wrestling figures, including both Mr Perfect and Bret Hart.

Now that I'm moving in with a boy, I need to clear the decks to ensure that both my collection of Harry Potter memorabilia and small effigies of The Ultimate Warrior fit alongside his extensive collection of comic books and things with Deadpool's face on.

I can't believe some of the stuff I have unearthed to make space for this new life together. In what I think is still quite a short innings (though my colleague Jake, flushed with youth, thinks I'm ancient because I was born in the 80s) I have accumulated a whole heap of stuff, too meaningful or nice to throw away but now too much to take along with me.

Half of my things I've taken to the charity shop – books, DVDs and other stuff that gathers dust on my shelves. With my Kindle and Netflix subscriptions, I don't need to keep them (I keep telling myself, over and over).

Other stuff though, not even the chazzer would want. I've got a T-shirt from the day I left primary school aged 11, signed with the names of my little classmates, with messages of good luck. I needed it – big school was rubbish. But do I need that shirt now?

I even have my big school tie and the scientific calculator that I used when I failed my GCSE maths exam. I'm in two minds whether to keep these things. I don't know why – I hated school, and maths more than anything. But things just get a hold of you sometimes, don't they? It seems weird throwing it away now I've had it for this long. And that's pretty much the issue I have with around 90 per cent of my physical belongings.

I've packed away pots of Play-Doh that my boss gave me for Christmas last year, just in case I ever need them. I've nicked banana boxes from Tesco and filled them with trinkets I forgot I had and can't bear to part with – a Jew's harp, a bouncy ball with my name encased within the rubber and a PG Tips toy chimp I named Jordison, who accompanied me on a very tumultuous journey I took back in 2004.

I've also found that I've got a hundred different body moisturisers, many of them unopened. There are so many creams that not even Ben Grimm could make use of them. And you know that The Thing has a severe dry skin problem.

Why do people keep giving me moisturisers? Do I look reptilian? In need of dermatological nourishment? Do I flake when I walk, leaving a blizzard in my wake like the White Witch?

I have at least 50 nail polishes in various colours, though I only use three of them. I have as many lipsticks, if not more, and when I go to throw them away, I'm reminded of the price I paid to get them in the first place and throw them into the box of things to take with us. The value of much of my stuff comes from the kind people that gave them to me as gifts. Throwing them away would feel like a terribly ungrateful move. But what charity shop wants opened hand cream from Christmas 2009?

And then there's the stuff that feels really meaningful. There's a ticket from the first gig I ever attended – Anthrax at Wolverhampton's Civic Hall – along with a Christmas decoration my niece made for me when she was tiny. It says 'I Love You' in glitter. She clearly did not care for the cliché 'merry' this or 'seasons' that back then.

A bulk of my stuff comes in the form of hundreds of copies of the paper, from the very first time I got my name in there, to last week's issue.

The novelty of being a published writer after spending 15 years really striving to be one has yet to wear off – it's something that I'll never forgive myself for when I do my back in hoisting boxes up the stairs of the new place. Then I can get rid of the papers, and the constant backache will serve as a permanent reminder of that achievement. Well done, Kirsty. . .

I've always been a bit of a hoarder, but I'm going to need to try and curb this as the next stage of my life begins. Though all of these things – the action figures, gig tickets and papers – are nice to have, it's easy to mistake them for being the things that have made my life so far.

If you strip it all back, those things act only as a reminder of excellent times, happy moments and the people that have contributed to making them so.

The truth be told, I could throw all of them into a skip and move only with the clothes on my back (I'd need these to avoid being arrested for indecent exposure) and I'd be losing nothing. I've realised that I put too much onus on the physical things I have, worrying too much about how much they cost instead of seeing the true value of them.

So I think I'm going to chuck most of it in the bin. Only most though – those wrestling figures are vintage.