Moving: An Odyssey of Self-Doubt
You’re moving! Congratulations. Your new home could be in a bustling metropolis, a quaint country haven, or 20 minutes away from where you live now in your parents' house, where you've already lived twice as an adult and promised yourself you would never live again!
The first step in moving is to evaluate the other things going on in your life. Experts say you shouldn't experience more than one major life stressor at a time, and moving is one of them. Stressors can include breaking up, getting married, starting a new job, having a baby, beginning or leaving school, or a dramatic change in your financial state. You're definitely not dealing with any of those things, right? Because if you're moving and doing any of the other things, you'll fail at all of them and get a chronic illness, like irritable bowel syndrome. And illness is a life stressor! Keep that in mind throughout your move.
The next step is to evaluate the things you have in your house and figure out how much you want to keep, donate, or sell. Agonize over each object for any or all of the following reasons:
- The amount of money you spent on it and its genuine worthlessness now.
- How little you actually used it despite your promises to yourself when you bought it.
- The loving moments that you and your current or former husband or boyfriend had within a 10-foot radius of it.
- How much your landlord will charge you if you leave it.
- How much weight you’ve gained or lost in such a short period of time (and weight gain, weight loss, or a change in eating habits are also life stressors!).
- Whether the people at Out of the Closet will make snide remarks when you donate it.
- How much your friends will judge you when they’re moving it.
Now that you have your keep, donate, and sell piles… you made piles, right? Big ones? Seemingly insurmountable piles of everything you own? Good! Second-guess everything in each pile. Your future happiness is at stake if you keep too much, or donate the wrong things, or sell your possessions for too little. Now third-guess.
Schedule a yard sale and then cancel it at the last minute, even if you’ve put an ad on Craigslist already. People will still come to your apartment building very early and disturb your neighbors, but maybe they’ll see the “For Lease” sign in front of your apartment and decide to rent it. Then you didn’t really waste anyone’s time! Finally, in the middle of the night, leave both the “sell” and “donate” piles in the alley behind Out of the Closet under the sign that says “No Dumping.”
The next step is to get some boxes. While you’re in the dumpster of your old high school finding clean-enough boxes, think about how much promise everyone said you had when you were 17. Walk past where your old locker was. Wipe a tear on it.
Three days before your lease ends, scramble up everything in the “keep” pile, wrap each item in newspaper so it gets nice and inky, and put it in a box that's ½ inch smaller than it on all sides. Repeat for three days straight. Call in sick to your job if you have one, and think about how obvious your lie is because everyone at work knows you’re moving.
On the very last night at your old place, don’t sleep. Sleeping makes you soft, and you need to be crabby and impatient with the people who are helping you move, because how else will they know that you’re serious when you say that the Malm dresser has a loose drawer front, Josh? OK, now it’s broken.
At the end of moving day, when everything is out of your old place and so many more boxes than you could have ever imagined are in your new place, reward yourself for all the hard work you’ve done with food. Pizza and beer taste the best when you’re sitting on the floor of your now-empty apartment with your closest friends, your brother, and your dad (who bought the pizza) — all of whom are looking at you with irritation. You deserve a treat!
After your landlord comes by and gives you a third to none of your deposit back even though you were counting on at least half, drive to your new place, but hit Burrito King first because you’re not going to be living anywhere near it anymore.
Open up the front door of your new, or new-again, home. Put a beach towel on your bed, lie down in your dusty t-shirt and too-tight shorts, and know, on some level, you might one day regret everything you just did. Then, look up and see glow-in-the-dark stars that you put on your ceiling when you were 12, and thank yourself for not listening when your mom told you to take them down the last time you moved out.
Previously: "I let a German computer tell me when to have sex."
Justine Garrett is a writer living in Los Angeles. She will soon live in a different part of Los Angeles.
I just moved this weekend, actually. But on my previous move, I had just graduated college, broken up with a boyfriend and my dad had recently died. It was actually, genuinely the best move I've experienced… probably because I don't remember it.
I like how half of those things are reasons you probably need to move in the first place.
Leaving the Burrito King Zone is a goddamn tragedy. I'll pour a forty on the ground for you.
@deepomega My only consolation about leaving is that I won't be around during the tragic/smelly Echo Park Lake closure.
I'm moving in a few weeks. You guys got any boxes?
@boyofdestiny I've kept the same moving boxes for the past 3 years. They are ready to collapse in on themselves, but they do their job.
@Marissa E@twitter Fancy! I have a few of those, although not nearly enough.
@boyofdestiny Perhaps we can turn the Hairpin meet-ups into moving box donation drives…
@boyofdestiny I've got a TON of boxes. Hint: go to a print/copy shop. Where I work, we've got a shitload of WB Mason boxes, which are sturdy, and they have handles and removable lids. They're small enough that you can fill them with books and still be able to carry them (unless you're really weak like me), and they stack really well. My moves have been so much easier since I started working here.
@Ophelia Good idea! If anybody needs some, I've got a couple dozen good ones left from my move and I'm probably going to the Philly meet-up.
@boyofdestiny Get thee to your local liquor store. They usually have tons of boxes lying around and if you ask nice, they'll let you take some. Bonus: Your new neighbors will totally think you're an alcoholic.
@boyofdestiny Me too! If you're anywhere near a JP Licks, they usually have tons of boxes out back. Pro-tip: don't ask, just wait until it's closed and dress all in black + balaclava. Boston cops are friendly, and love surprises!
@boyofdestiny You can borrow mine, I have a bunch from my last move scatted around my apartment – just in case. (Also as a threatening gesture towards my landlord. I'm ready to leave any time, pal! I suggest you fix that window.)
@science is sexy@twitter HATE HATE HATE. I miss JP Licks so much
They have peach icecream this month! And rickey sorbets! Why do I still torture myself by non unsubscribing to the licks fix newsletter!!!
@boyofdestiny WB Mason boxes are, for real, THE BEST BOXES IN THE WORLD. My mom is a moving consultant (aka "that lady that goes to your house and tells you how much it'll cost to move from Milwaukee to Savannah"), so we have an endless supply of free, legitimately-designed-for-moving boxes in our house, and we STILL use WB Mason boxes. And hoard them as though they were gold.
@Scarlettb That's why I keep telling everyone to talk to me when they move. I work at a print/copy shop and we've got lots of them. They're the best, hands-down!
I hate those "lists of major life stressors" that inevitably seem to happen all in the same year, like moving, divorce, miscarriage, death of a family member, financial misfortune (like a foreclosure), major health issue. After reading those lists, and adding the points, it seems that any time someone moves they should probably just off themselves because their lives are clearly way too f*cked to continue living.
@teenie lol that's me below. I agree!
@teenie Yes, I can't remember any time I moved that didn't have a whole heap of other stressful changes attached.
God, we are buying a house and hopefully the sale will go through, but the other day I was offered a job though the agency that I work at. And although it would have been a good move professionally, I just couldn't do it. In the past nine months we got engaged, moved across the country, sold a house, moved into an apartment, had the death of a loved one, eloped, semi planned a real wedding for our family and friends (canceled for now). Not only would the new job be a crappy commute if we get this house, I just couldn't imagine closing on a home and moving all in the middle of it. I felt sick to my stomach yesterday saying yes or no, but I'm glad I said no. On that note though I love moving INTO a new place…not really the whole lifting heavy boxes thing, but the setting up and arranging etc.
The only moves I've experienced (and packed and moved out myself, thank you) were dorm room moves from year to year. E V E R Y single room had glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. I'm convinced every dorm room has them. I liked them, though.
@Marissa E@twitter YES. In my hall of res in uni,they must have given out glow in the dark stars at freshers fair years and years ago. They are still on the ceiling of every single room of that building.
We're doing well over here. We're in the middle of a one-month span in which we moved to a new state, both started new jobs (his involves starting 70+ hr/week school), are getting married, and we're taking in about the same amount of money but the cost of living in our new place is way, way higher. We're doing OK, though the wedding part is stressing me out no matter how much I try not to let it.
Whenever I'm doing the agonizing thing, I tell myself that it's never too late to make a good decision about not keeping something, and then I feel marginally better about it.
IKEA furniture never moves well–you get one move, MAX, out of that shit. If you think you're going to move it a second time, you should just take it out on the lawn, hack it to pieces with an ax and set it on fire now just to save yourselve time and energy.
@parallel-lines….except it doesn't burn!!! It just melts and emits toxic fumes.
@parallel-lines I've got a Malm bed that I've moved 6 times and a 5×5 Expedit that I've moved 5 times that are both doing fine. The 6 move Malm dresser has seen better days though.
@pumpyumpyumpkin That they moved that many times is not the most incredible part of this comment. The most incredible part is that you remember the names of the furniture!
@pumpyumpyumpkin Sigh, the Malm – the 2-move bed is starting to go (drawer fronts particularly)…it probably won't come with us next time.
@pumpyumpyumpkin We have a 5×5 Expedit! I'm kind of dreading moving it and everything else we own in the next week, though. I hate furniture. I'm proposing to my boyfriend that we chuck everything and just live in a nest of blankets.
@boyofdestiny It helps that 90% of people buy the same line/style of Ikea stuff. If you have a bed or dresser, chances are it's Malm (check!), bookshelf=Billy (check!), picture frames=Ribba (again, check!). We have met the Ikea sheeple, and they are us.
@figwiggin I used to have the 5×5 but it was such a nightmare to put together (it almost ruined two friendships and caused a screaming match) that I sold it rather than opting to move it or take it apart and reassemble it.
@parallel-lines I had one, too, and just left it behind for the new roommate when I moved out. I suspect it's still there.
@parallel-lines Oh god, the Expedit is the worst thing to put together ever. The way-too-easy "that's what she said" jokes (that cease to be funny after like, a minute), the moment you realize you need to be a physicist to calculate tension to get it done correctly, and the realization that you irrationally hate everyone you're with at the moment, Ikea and all of Sweden.
@parallel-lines "I don't have any IKEA furniture" is my "I don't even own a TV".
@whizzard I do…but I stopped shopping there when I realized most of it only lasted a couple years and I could spend a little more, get something awesome/vintage/less environmentally destructive and make it last forever. Plus I fucking hate stepping foot in IKEA – I don't know how they engineered a store to be both aspirational and depressing all at the same time – oh yeah I do know, mazes.
@Ophelia I have a friend whose Malm bed didn't move particularly well, and broke one night while her and the guy were doin' it. But the radiant beaming on the dude's face was just about worth it…I hear.
@parallel-lines I've got a CD/DVD cabinet whose name escapes me because they stopped making it years ago. I thought for sure it would fall apart during the first move, because it seems flimsy even for Ikea, but it has survived through FOUR MOVES. Amazing.
@parallel-lines I heard they're based on casinos! Like, IKEA actually hired people who normally design casinos to design their stores. This is why there are no windows or clocks until you get to the cafeteria.
@parallel-lines My Malm dresser and Jonas desk have both been moved 4 times, and they're still going strong. Well, the dresser's starting to fall apart, due to chronic overstuffing, but that's not because of moving it! It's because I have hoarding tendencies.
@theharpoon That makes sense. I have been driven to near madness trying to find the exit with only a $.50 hot dog to soothe me in my panic.
@dearheart Yes! My fiance and I have also destroyed a Malm bed through the awesome power of our boning. (It probably also had something to do with our combined 600+ pounds.)
moving on saturday! into the first place i've ever actually *purchased,* which means i'm enjoying my very first down payment and mortgage. this is perfect, because i'm also helping move my office out of its current building AND interviewing for a fancy promotion.
i probably already have IBS/cancer, don't i?
@superfluousconsonants Are you tall? Because if you're tall, it's totally cancer.
@superfluousconsonants its totally both!
Where is setting everything on fire and starting life anew half a world away on this list?
It's easy. Here's how you do it:
She worked quickly but without hurry. She put an old apron to cover her clothes. In the basement she found a jelly jar with a top and carried it out to the carriage house where the tools were kept. In the chickenyard she caught a little pullet, took i tto the block and chopped its head off, and held the writhing neck over the jelly jar until it was half full of blood. Then she carried the quivering pullet to the manure pile and buried it deep. Back in the kitchen she took off the apron and put it in the stove and poked the coals until a flame sprang up on the cloth. She washed her hands and inspected her shoes and stockings and wiped a dark spot from the toe of her right shoe. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright with color and her eyes shone and her mouth turned up in its small childlike smile. On her way out she hid the jelly jar under the lowest part of the kitchen steps.
The fire broke out at about three o'clock in the morning. It rose, flared, roared, crashed, and crumbled in on itself almost before anyone noticed it.
You're welcome.
@melis East of Eden!
CATHY!
@agba We were supposed to see Cathy as an instructional figure, right?
My best move was definitely the day after I went to a local baseball game where your ticket gets you all the beer you can drink. The hangover itself would have been bad enough, but I also had to deal with the fact that my legs and arms were completely destroyed from running to catch the bus post-game and (inevitably) wiping out. Carrying anything was hellish, and having to explain the assorted injuries to my helpful parents was worse.
Oh god, how timely. I'm moving right now! Or, trying to move, aka couch-surfing and scouring the wasteland of Craigslist. And it coincided with an era-ending breakup — this is so far not the romcom hair-flipping montage I'd been promised! I wonder if you can fail at breaking up, which is a failure in and of itself (or a success?). Lupus, I'm ready for you, make me write like Flannery!
@wakeshakecake Have you seen this? The last question. Gold stars, for real.
Good luck and xoxoxoxoxo
This is pretty much my life right now, multiple life stressors included. Moving to a new city (Minneapolis), even though I don't have a new job lined up yet. Will be living with a boyfriend for the first time ever. And I just finished my MA degree.
Is there anyway to skip ahead to the part where we all sit around on the floor eating pizza?
@Pinecones Yes, and order it from Pizza Lucia in Minneapolis, or, if you wanna have my favorite pizza when I was growing up – Broadway Pizza (yay tiny pizza squares!)
@Pinecomes Galactic Pizza! They deliver in superhero costumes! I mean really.
@parallel-lines @yikes! Thank you for saving me the time and effort it takes to find a good pizza place. This and finding a new hair stylist are the first things I take care of in a new city.
@Pinecones Shameless plug – Charlie at Haus salon is a hairstyling dynamo and a lovely person (also, clearly, a friend of mine
)!
Add in a couple of soul-crushing Craigslist open houses, a laid-off boyfriend (whom I live with), a grandmother who died, and a good friend who got stabbed in a mugging, and you have my June and July.
Things have gotten better now– friend got better, boyfriend started his new job today, and 2 weeks ago we ate pizza and drank shitty Lambrusco on the floor of our new place.
No chronic illnesses yet, but I do have high cholesterol.
(Sorry for the life update, perfect strangers! Sometimes a girl needs to vent.)
@cuminafterall my goodness! "hugs," as the internet kids say.
Malm! everyone has malm.
@dormilona I have a Malm bedframe. That thing will eat your shins and toes. When it happens, be sure to scream, "OH GOD!! I'VE BEEN MALMED!!"
@dormilona We refer to ours by their names. "We need to dust Malm." "Does Billy need a brother?"
So timely! My boyfriend is moving into my place this week! And he was going to use the same movers that he did before but he didn't call them until last week so they're all booked up! So now I'm calling to try to schedule movers for him! And they're super expensive! And he's so stressed out! HAHAHA!
I've moved once for a break up (Michigan to New York), once for marriage (New York to San Francisco) and once for a baby (San Francisco to Michigan). Life stressors fill you with the adrenaline you need to schlepp your belongs across country. Without them, you're screwed.
@kayjay What kind of jerk baby insists that you move?
The mean, cigar-chomping baby from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, maybe? "Listen, lady, if you think I'm about to spend another summer in this heat, ohh, have you got another thing coming. I don't have enough tsorres as it is?"
OMG count me in among the just moved gang! I'm a few weeks in and still have a pile of empty boxes sitting in the middle of my living room floor and have no idea where I put anything in my bedroom.
Not just my most recent move, but also the one before that, the electricity wasn't on when I moved in. I called, of course, but ConEd thought they could do it remotely and couldn't because the people before me had been shut off for nonpayment. And for some reason, the people you call to tell your moving have no way of checking that! Both times involved weepy tirades against customer service along the lines of "I know it's not your fault, personally, but it's just not fair, because you guys have me by the balls, you know?"
I am about to drop off our security deposit for an awesomer apartment five blocks from where we are. And even though we've been preparing for this move for months (nothing precipitated the move, except a greater awareness of our current neighborhood), I'm already freaking out.
Nothing will ever be as bad as the time I got laid off, so we had to move from one apartment to a cheaper one, and on the last day of running stuff over, my car broke down halfway between the apartments. Sorry, tow truck driver, for the epic meltdown.
Two things:
1. Frogbox. If they are not in your area (and they probably aren't, unless you are in Seattle, Canada or Minneapolis), look for a similar company. It made everything about my last move easier.
2. Multiple stressors at once are a goddamn fact of life, and those experts are full of shit. You aren't a delicate flower – you can handle a shit ton of change and upheaval at once. You know what's worse? Inertia and anxiety-based procrastination. A body in motion tends to stay in motion and momentum is one hell of a drug.
@karion Oh! In Chicago they're called "Redbox". Same concept!
@karion Thanks for the mention! We are also now in Boise Idaho and will be in every major US city within three years. Check out our site http://www.frogbox.com for more info.
I attribute the many many moves my wife have made to the fact that we both suffer from Grass Is Greener Syndrome, which, trust me, THE GRASS IS NEVER GREENER. Now we've been in the same place for five years, by far our longest stint, but I can feel the nomadic urges taking back over.
You guys! We just moved too! And I just started a new job and I just found out I have lupus! WTF! Although, I am fine. We hired movers. My doctor told me not to be in the sun or get "hot". I was like, uh, it's Chicago in the end of July. I'm going to be in the sun and get hot. Sorry. Multiple life stressors for the win!
@Olivia2.0 Honey, I am with you on that (I moved from Chicago in July immediately after finding out I had MS!), but let me tell you: seriously, don't get hot. Hot is a MAJOR trigger for both MS and lupus. I know it sounds impossible, but just…buy a bottle of spritzy toner, and spritz yourself regularly, drink a ridiculous amount of water, and try to rest in the shade/rub your face with ice every couple of boxes. Heat-triggered attacks suck balls.
I'm moving back to the UK from France in 3 weeks, to a city I've never even been to, and leaving my job to go back to studying. In a year's time, when I've finished my course, I'll probably do it again. At this stage I can't bring myself to stress over it.
My husband fractured his ankle in the middle of our last move, requiring a trip to the emergency room. Why do you do this to me, moving???
you forgot, "cover your bed with clothes you havent worn in 3 years but you totally will one day, and then sleep on the floor, surrounded by piles of stuff that fall on you in the middle of the night"
not that i'm doing that right now, or anything…
So I'm moving, like, now, and also in the process of writing the last fifteen pages of a research project that's due tonight. The movers will be here bright and early on Thursday, and I have packed exactly two boxes of my two bedroom home.
Current strategy is to finish the project tonight and buy many cases of beer and invite everyone I know over to pack for me tomorrow. Bribery is all I have left at this point.
There is one key to moving and one key only: MOVERS. Mooooo-vers. Movers movers movers. Last time I moved, I paid two charming, yet smelly Irishmen $450 to pack my kitchen, carry my several hundred pounds of books in boxes, and cart all of my other belongings up and down stairs on their backs, and it was the best thing ever. I am a big believer in putting a dollar price on my own personal pain and anguish. As I am terrible at moving on my own, I consider a couple of hundred bucks a goddamn bargain in exchange for not having to do any heavy lifting. The various boyfriends I have involuntarily yelled at mid-move over the years also agree on this subject.
The actual wood IKEA stuff tends to be much more durable than the particleboard nonsense they usually push.
Next time I move, I will likely set everything alight. I view IKEA furniture as temporary. It's like a pop-up restaurant. Nice for awhile but it will go away eventually.
Maybe I will just put an ad on CL saying, "free for the taking, ransack the house so I don't have to take as much."
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The fact that my boyfriend and I moved 350 miles to my mom's, THEN 60 miles to our new place AND we both got new jobs all within 4 months and I did not get shingles is a miracle. But I never want to move again.
Oh god this made me curl into a ball atop my lonely mountain of clothes.
And I haven't even found an apartment yet, thanks to all the young people of Seattle Craigslist not wanting to deal with me being 2938592850298502 miles away in Chicago? I think I need a drink.
I just moved across the country (after making many, many agonizing piles of stuff) in order to live with my boyfriend. Who was diagnosed with leukemia almost immediately after the move, and has been in the hospital for four weeks.
I guess we're avoiding the stress of, um…fighting over where the furniture goes?
I'm in the middle of the biggest move of my life. I'd like to add to the list: develop acne on your chest for the first time since you were 15, have reoccuring dreams that you've been fired/burned the house down/are in your car trying to get home but can't, subsist on slimjims & whatever you can buy with the Dunkin Donuts gift card that's in you purse,take up smoking again.
We moved ten times in eleven years.
Believe me: It's overrated…