Congratulations! You’re moving out of your old apartment! Whether by choice or by brute force, times like these can be a huge stresser. But there’s hope. We’ve (I’ve) sifted through all the unnecessary steps for Real Girls like us so you can get your move on, and then move on with your life! Get it!? HA!

Boring Advice: Make sure to get more boxes than you need in a range of sizes. You’ll be surprised how much stuff you actually have!

Real Girl Advice: Things you will use instead of boxes: tote bags, pillowcases (for when you run out of tote bags), paper shredder (for when you run out of your two pillowcases), anything vaguely hollowed out (helmet– helmet? helmet).

Boring Advice: If you want to save a pretty penny, get your packing boxes from a grocery store. Or better yet–a pet store is a better bet! Boxes from a pet store are usually smaller and sturdier.

Real Girl Advice: Why do you have a helmet? You don’t even have a bike…

Boring Advice: Take care while your packing to sort things into items you could donate or throw away. You don’t want to haul unwanted refuse to your brand new apartment. Start fresh!

Real Girl Advice: Unread books are a burden – a burden you will shoulder as punishment for not reading more books for as long as you shall live. You hear that, Mao’s Great Famine  and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics? You will never be read and yet you will be held a captive cross to bear forever.

Boring Advice: Color code your rooms! Assign a color to every room in your apartment, and then tape a piece of construction paper to a box with the corresponding room color. It will make moving in and organizing a snap!

Real Girl Advice: Since you’ll be living out of your car until you find a new apartment, make sure to put stuff you use every day like your toothbrush and shoes on top of stuff like all those old balls of yarn and free weights in the backseat. This avoids you having to pull everything out of your car in the driveway of the guy you’re dating in the middle of night like a scavenging raccoon to find aforementioned toothbrush and shoes. Stay classy.

Boring Advice: You can never be too careful with breakables. Newspaper, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, those tiny air bags – you can’t put a price on your valuables. Check your local storage center for packing solutions designed just for delicate kitchenware!

Real Girl Advice: Pile glassware in a found box. Shove box in your backseat, have fate take care of the rest. If glassware stays intact, God is real.

Boring Advice: Reserve a moving truck online well in advance, especially if it’s the end of the month. Or if you want to get frugal, enlist some good friends and pack their cars to the brim with your belongings. You’ll be surprised how the promise of pizza can bring friends together!

Real Girl Advice: Refusal to confront the inevitable led you to not reserving a U-Haul and now they’re all out and you’re gonna have to purge your belongings. It’s fine, you didn’t need a desk. Put desk on the street and watch someone with an appropriate vehicle haul it away. No one must bear witness to your lack of organizational skills. Continue shame-cleaning the house while watching La Bamba alone.

Boring Advice: Buy a clipboard and create a room-by-room cleaning schedule. Anything’s possible when you create the appropriate workflow!

Real Girl Advice: You know who’s helmet that probably was? Carl’s. That time everyone got wasted watching the Squeakquel at your house and you burnt what’s-his-face’s sock on the stove for fun. Probably then.

Boring Advice: When in doubt about how clean your apartment should be, get in touch with your landlord about what his/her expectations are about cleanliness. They may offer a professional cleaning service to do the dirty work for a fee, which could save you time and possibly money in the long run!

Real Girl Advice: Nail polish not fully coming out of the grain of your wood floor? Reproach the problem area with a pairing knife and do what comes naturally.

Boring Advice: Be kind to the Earth– make sure to properly dispose of CDs, batteries, printer cartridges and old electronics such as calculators and iPods at a designated location.

Real Girl Advice: What location? What does that even mean? There’s no time to have a panic attack, the landlord is coming in 30 minutes for the inspection! Save all batteries and stuff in a bag, then throw it away last minute in the garbage. Apologize to unborn children for killing their inherited Earth.

Boring Advice: Plan a checklist of address changes, especially with the post office since it may take weeks for your forwarding address to kick in.

Real Girl Advice: Steal the mail key. Only update your address when your landlord threatens to charge you. By then, you’ll probably be living in yet another apartment. Think about investing in a P.O box like a fugitive.

Boring Advice:  Congratulations, you moved out! Now it’s time to celebrate with a glass of wine. Or be naughty and make a martini. But don’t go overboard– everything in moderation including moderation. You’ve earned it.

Real Girl Advice: Funny how moving all day long makes you forget how you can’t handle gin and how physical exertion further lowers your tolerance to drink it. Go over to that guys house and end the night crying in his bathtub and yelling out all the zip codes you’ve lived in. 90027. 11237. 46135. 01002.You’ve earned it.

Image by Taylor Orci