How to Move Out Of Your Last College Apartment

If you didn’t go to college in the middle of nowhere (either a liberal arts school where ultimate frisbee is everyone’s favorite pastime or a small Christian college where students are jerking it to photos of Michelle Bachmann), chances are you lived off campus at some point during the past four years. But now you’ve graduated, summer’s over, and it’s time to move into your first post-grad apartment. Whether it’s across the country or to the cheaper neighborhood six blocks away, you’re hit with the realization that in this place, it’s not going to be as socially acceptable to wake up on Sunday morning with spaghetti in your hair and that guy from your Social Theory class under your bed. This is a big transition, and here’s how to navigate it.

1. Look around your current apartment and realize you haven’t done laundry in a month. You probably want to move into this new place looking clean, or at least wearing underwear. Carry 18 pounds of laundry to the basement. Swear at the machine when it’s not working and then realize you tried to put a Canadian 50 cent coin in one of the quarter slots.

2. Go back upstairs and call your mom to ask for moving advice. When she starts telling you that you need to figure your life out and settle down, start crying uncontrollably. In between big, hiccupy tears explain what’s bothering you. (“I really really wanted that house in JP. Even if I said I didn’t. I just have a lot of feelings right now. I just tried jalapeno poppers for the first time yesterday and they were SO good and then I started thinking about all the other hundreds of jalapeno poppers that I missed out on over my lifetime and it’s making me SO sad.”)

3. End phone call laugh-crying. Wipe snot off face. Search cabinets for alcohol. Find low-quality vodka, pour some on ice, curl up in window seat reading Garden of Eden, which Hemingway wrote about Zelda Fitzgerald. Hey, at least I’m not as crazy as this bitch, amiright?

4. Best friend who is moving hours away comes over with wine to “help you pack.” Remember when you and your high school boy/girlfriend left for college and you thought it was the saddest long-distance relationship you would have to live with? Wrong. This is worse, because you can comfortably fart in front of this person.

5. Order Chinese food. Spend four hours watching The League and eating scallion pancakes.

6. Realize you’ve left your laundry in the dryer. Go downstairs. Half your clothes are shrunken beyond belief and half are still damp. How the fuck is that even possible? Pile everything into a big box. There, that counts as packing, right?

6. Go back upstairs to continue eating Chinese food. Start discussing all the exotic pets you’re going to buy for your new apartment (i.e. teacup pigs, miniature horses). Decide what you definitely want is a fennec fox and show that photo to your best friend. Spend an hour drinking wine and looking at Zooborns.

7. Moving is so stressful! I just wish I had someone to commiserate with! Everyone you know is going through the same process right now, but you text your ex-boyfriend anyways. Next thing you know, you’re throwing emoticons into the conversation and inviting yourself over to see his new apartment.

8. Watch the Nicki Minaj and Rhianna video on repeat until your best friend has to leave. Think about putting freshly-washed sheets on the bed, but what’s the point?

9. Wake up at 6 AM wrapped up like a burrito in your mattress pad with 95% of your belongings yet to be packed.