Jenny Bathurst - "I have grown into such a bargain hunter"

Jenny is studying journalism at the University of Brighton.

"I’m currently lying on the carpet in my home, surrounded by stuff. That’s a bit vague, you might think, but the only way the boxes and bags around me can be defined is as ‘stuff’, because it’s practically a culmination of my university life. Today I moved out of my student house for the summer before returning in September for my final year, but as the house is used as an Airbnb over the coming months we have to remove every possession from every crevice and play an elaborate game of Tetris attempting to fit everything into our family cars. Textbooks, scatter cushions, and – the most annoying of all – clothes hangers. I would like to speak to a person who has effectively packed clothes hangers without either tearing the bag or taking up a disproportionate amount of space. Bags for Life suddenly become Bags for Five Minutes if clothes hangers have anything to do with them.

"Anyway. You probably didn’t come here to read about a twenty-year-old have a midlife crisis over a first world problem. Something I learnt this week is how ridiculously reliant I am on so much ‘stuff.’ And when I say reliant, I don’t mean I NEED all these things, simply that I can’t bear to part with them. The last two months I have been living in my parent’s home due to my health in which I lived off a suitcase’s worth of clothes and other items. Not once did I think, ‘Cor, I wish I could wear that specific pink vest top right now’, and yet there I was this morning, cramming it in the bag at the last minute desperate to hang onto it rather than move it elsewhere.