When you’re in your 20s, there’s basically one certainty in life: You’re going to move.
You have no idea if you’ll like your job and want to keep doing it.
You don’t know if you should get married or live in sin.
You’re not sure if you should have kids or just get a golden retriever.
You can’t predict whether next week might be your breaking point–you know, when you’ll abandon civilization and travel the world, a nomadic rebel who refuses to succumb to the 9-to-5 gig.
Still, there’s no question that at some point during the next year you’ll be combing grocery stores looking for moving boxes and begging your casual acquaintances to help you load your dresser onto a truck.*
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I’m convinced it’s some sort of sadistic right of passage we must all experience so that we’ll enjoy the staid domesticity of our late 30s, when we’ve finally realized that tormenting ourselves with these big-picture questions is a futile habit that will only drive us insane.
This weekend, I’ll be moving to my 11th apartment in 7 years. (Gee, mom and dad, I have no idea how those jolly times passed so fast. Remember when the three of us carted that treadmill I never used across the country in the middle of a snowstorm in that scary U-Haul, and grandma tagged along and made us visit every Cracker Barrel between San Diego and Chicago? Man, that was by far my favorite.)
Alas, moving is unavoidable.
You’re going to graduate school.
The people upstairs at your current place wear cement shoes and do the running man at 3 a.m. while blasting their old Milli Vanilli CDs.
You can’t justify spending $1,500 per month in rent for a 100-square-foot studio in a fancy high-rise.
Whatever the reason: You’re moving.
I’ve experienced some variation of all of those, and let me tell you: With each move, I get grumpier.
In order to alleviate some of the stress leading up to this one, I have decided to vent with my top 5 list of the most annoying things to move.
No. 5: My books. Of all my earthly possessions, I would be most distraught if I did not have my books. There are hundreds, from “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” to “The Norton Anthology of English Literature.” Unfortunately, when packed, the book boxes weigh about a gazillion pounds.
No. 4: Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett O’Hara is my cat, a precocious little beast who has never met a cardboard box she did not immediately terrorize. That’s not particularly awesome when my apartment is flooded with cardboard boxes.
No. 3: Miscellaneous bathroom items. It’s when I move that I ask myself, “Why did I buy 20 bottles of lotion at Bath & Body Works this year?” The answer is, inevitably, that I went to buy one bottle and the sales girl told me if I bought two more I could get a fourth bottle free. It always seems like a good idea until I have to worry about the bottles exploding and soaking everything I own with the smell of plumeria and sun-ripened raspberry.
No. 2: Dated photos. I’m 25 now, and I have to ask myself if it’s worth the bubble wrap to keep preserving a framed collage my best friend gave me as a gift when we graduated high school. Do visitors really need to see Sarah and me grinning with our poofy bangs after we finished the infamous 10-mile hike at 6th-grade camp?
No. 1: Myself. I’m so freakin’ sappy that I’m always a wreck when I leave an apartment. I think of all the times I laughed, cried and watched “The O.C.” in it (often in the same sitting) that I can just barely get out the door.
*Note: Anyone who wants to help me load my dresser onto a truck this weekend has my e-mail.
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