10 Reasons Moving Makes Me Nervous

During my four years of college I moved ten times, including to and from Australia. After college, I spent four days at home and then moved across the country. Since moving across the country, I’ve moved twice more. I hate moving. I have too much stuff and always overpack. I flew to Australia with a box of Sharpies, a lint roller and bedding as if I were going to a third world country that wouldn’t offer those amenities. Every one of my moves has involved yelling at my mother, even when she was across the country or the world. My moving is just a bad situation for everyone, which is why I’ve resolved to live in my current apartment for the rest of my life. Things are just better that way.

Here are ten reasons why moving makes me nervous and I am never doing it again.

1. Packing

I always underestimate just how much junk I have and end up not being able to fit it all into the boxes, car, truck, etc. This has led to things like shoving all of my clothes into trash bags and tying my trunk down with extension cords.

2. Hiring Movers

The one time I hired a moving company was actually really awesome. The process of hiring the moving company, however, was nerve-inducing. There are so many moving companies and none of them will give you an estimate until you tell them the square footage of your place, how many boxes you have, how many miles the move is and what your spirit animal is. I just needed someone to move my Ikea couch, not adopt my first born. It’s so hard to tell if you’re being overcharged when no one will give you an exact estimate! Small! My apartment is small, just tell me how much it will cost!

3. Renting A U-Haul

I made a lot of poor decisions during my last move. The worst being the U-Haul. It was the first time I was moving into my own place and I didn’t think I couldn’t afford a moving company alone. So, I rented a U-Haul. Driving a U-Haul is much harder than I expected. Those things are huge! Furthermore, I ended up looping around my building four times before finding a parking spot two blocks from the apartment. This meant that once we got the furniture out of my apartment, we then had to carry it two more blocks to the truck. It was so stupid and after buying my friends dinner and refilling the tank it ended up costing me almost as much as a moving company.

4. Roping Friends In To Help

When I moved out of college my senior year I was a blubbering mess. My guy friends took pity on me and moved ALL of my stuff out for me. It was wonderful. That has not been the case since. It’s so awkward to ask people to help you move. It’s like asking someone to drive you to the airport. It’s just a bummer for everyone involved. I usually spend the entire day apologizing and offering to buy everyone food. I think the lesson here is that I need to cry more.

5. Losing Stuff

At some point in all of my moves things get thrown out that shouldn’t or sent home with a roommate they don’t belong to. That time my guy friends moved all my stuff out of my college apartment? An entire trash bag full of my possessions got tossed that was supposed to go in the car, including one sneaker, my shot glass collection (I know) and all of the cords from my DVD Recorder. Yes, I put electrical cords, shot glasses and one sneaker into the same trash bag. I have a lot of crap and it was a really emotional week, okay?

6. Moving Large Furniture

The time I rented the U-Haul I didn’t have much furniture. It was just my bed, the couch, my DVD storage unit and some bar stools. My new apartment was on the ground floor, so getting the stuff off the truck and into the apartment would be a breeze. I even rented one of those rolling furniture dollies. Piece of cake! However, the thing I didn’t take into account when renting the U-Haul was the fact that my old apartment was up a narrow flight of stairs and my couch was massive. If you’re picturing the “PIVOT!” scene from Friends, you’ve got it. It was a lot of yelling, laughing and more yelling as the three of us struggled to get my giant couch down those stairs. The best part being that I wound up selling the couch two days later.

7. Injuries

I have no upper body strength and bad knees. So, I lift things entirely with my back. I also despise taking multiple trips and tend to overload myself with bags and boxes in order to make things go quicker. Needless to say, I have endured my fair share of moving-related injuries.

8. Switching Everything To The New Address

Most of the time it’s just calling a company, giving them your social security number and asking them to cancel service and forward your bill to a new address. Other times it’s scheduling a 20 hour window two weeks from now and then waiting 19.5 hours for some dude to show up and plug a box into the wall to set up internet. It’s just obnoxious and tedious and I always forget something and wind up with ten angry letters once I finally remember to arrange for the post office to forward my mail.

9. Security Deposits

I’m okay with cleaning my new apartment. It’s new and exciting and I have to live there. I can wrap my head around that. However, cleaning the empty apartment I am moving out of is an excruciating experience for me. If I’m going to spend my time cleaning an apartment, I should at least be the one who is going to live in it. Also, I have never ever moved into a clean apartment. If it wasn’t clean when I moved in, why should I have to leave it clean when I move out? My apartment senior year was DISGUSTING when we got there. My mother, roommate and I spent an entire weekend scrubbing it before we even moved anything in. Every surface was covered in grime and 6 layers of ugly contact paper. There was a legitimate dust bunny rolling around my bedroom closet. It was absurd. Then, when we moved out, we lost our ENTIRE security deposit. They knew we were all non-local graduates who wouldn’t be around to take them to small claims court, so they just ignored our calls. I’m still really bitter about it. Had I known they were going to take my security deposit I wouldn’t have spent the entire day Swiffering!

10. Buying and Selling Furniture On Craigslist

My current apartment didn’t come with a refrigerator. So I found a “company” on Craigslist that delivered used refrigerators for a reasonable price and booked them. I made sure to schedule the drop during the day and casually yelled at my “boyfriend” while on the phone with their service representative. The afternoon of the delivery I sent a text containing my current address and a description of my clothing to a few close friends in case I went missing. Then, I waited. I waited and waited. At around 5:30pm the delivery company called claiming there was an issue and they were running behind. It would be another hour. Then, another hour. Clearly they were waiting for the sun to go down so they could kidnap me under the cloak of darkness.  I didn’t have furniture or lamps in my apartment yet, so there I was sitting on the floor lit only by flashlight app, awaiting certain death. As the hours wore on and the plot of various SVU episodes ran through my mind, I became increasingly nervous and called everyone I could think of to come save me. My buddy Ted came through in the clutch and agreed to play the part of “boyfriend” in my scheme. He brought over some snacks and we sat patiently for another hour until a very tiny woman delivered my fridge. At 10:30pm.

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