I’m moving into a 2-2 with a friend on Friday and I’ve hardly packed anything. The new apartment is only a half-mile away, so I suppose I could throw stuff in my car and make a million trips. But that’s disorganized and totally grates with my personality. I need to pack things in modular units that are easy to carry and stack in the corner and never unpack. My life is very modular and yours probably is too. Furniture dismantles in logical chunks. Kitchen items naturally group themselves into categories: metal, plastic, the chemicals under the sink. Clothes demand piecewise attack: delicates like suits and recently dry-cleaned shirts must be hung; everything else gets thrown in a box.

Modularity greets us wherever we go. It’s in our political system. It’s in our religions. It’s in music.

I had better stop rambling and start packing.