Hi folks! I’m actually on a long overdue vacation to sunny Cuba this week. Right now I’m probably passed out and sunburnt. However, I have a guest post from another member of the Princess family– the fabulous Frog Princess, who writes over at Out of the Frying Pan. She’s writing about something I know far too well… the dreaded move. Enjoy!

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Moving. It’s something you do a lot in your 20s. Back and forth from your parents’ house(s) to the dorms. Into your first, crappy apartment. Out of your first crappy apartment when you learn that roommate selection should be a slightly more involved process than just “Hey! Live with me!” (some of us take a few more tries to learn that one).

As those of you who read my blog are aware, I am currently involved in a hellacious move. I am fond of saying that finding an apartment and moving in New York City is the last circle of hell that Dante chose not to write about, deciding that the pain and torture of being at the mercy of an undeservedly self-important and overly inflated real estate market, much akin to landing in Lucifer’s stomach after being masticated alongside the likes of Judas Iscariot for a millennia or so, was perhaps a bit too graphic and unsettling for his Renaissance audience. (Dante did write during the Renaissance, right? I hate not having the internet to be able to check these things.) For the last month, I have been a walking illustration of the adage that “Anything that can go wrong, will.” I won’t bore you with the particulars, but suffice it to say that this particular long and winding road has been nothing like the one the Beatles liked to sing about.

Yet here I sit, on my first morning in my new apartment, surrounded by shrink-wrapped furniture and stacks of boxes, drinking a cup of tea that it took eons to make, first needing to find the kettle, then a mug, then the tea bags—none of which, of course, were in the same box—eating tortilla chips because that’s more or less all I’ve got, and writing on my internet-less computer.

As the Violent Femmes said, “Nothing for a [wo]man to do but sit around and think…” about how moving makes you take stock of your life in a very interesting way.

It’s always a bizarre moment, when the door closes on the moving van (or truck, in my case) and you think… “That’s it. That’s everything I own. That’s my life.”

What does it contain?

In my case, it would seem, my life is dominated by two things: Books, and Shoes. My living room closet is currently stacked 6 feet high and 3 deep with boxes, 90% of which contain books. School books, classics, chick lit, YA, lots and lots of plays, children’s books, sci fi, travel guides… I’m sure many of you find yourself in the same boat, but damn do I have a lot of books.

I also have a lot of shoes. A lot. I even got rid of a ton of them and I’m still not sure where I’m going to fit all of the ones I’ve got left.

I’m not exactly sure when it was that I became a cliché, but I’m thinking it was somewhere around 16 when I fell in love with a pair of completely impractical orange suede platform boots (that I still can’t bring myself to throw away). It was all downhill from there.

But aside from what you own, it’s how you handle what you own. Do you pack meticulously and methodically? Or do you just throw shit in a box and call it a day? I usually start with Column A and end up in Column B, but at what point does the task become so daunting that the plastic figurine of Captain Picard that’s been sitting on your desk for the past 3 years for no particular reason suddenly ceases to have value and winds up in the bin? Conversely, which items do you hold on to no matter how far away the end of the tunnel seems?

And then there’s the transit. I personally hire professional movers to do all the work for me. Yes, they’re expensive (although this time my parents footed the bill because I am, how you say? Oh, yes, BROKE), but they are so, SO worth it. For those of you just starting on this particular adventure, heed my warning: there comes a point in your late 20s when your friends can no longer be conned into performing hard labor with the promise of pizza and beer. Particularly not Fifth-Floor-Walk-Up hard labor. So save those pennies and hire some professionals. At the end of the day, fewer things will be broken and you run far less of a risk of someone passing out in your stairwell.

So here I am. In a new place with less space and lots of stairs—but it also has brand new appliances and (gasp) a dishwasher (aka, The Holy Grail of NYC apartments, second only to the Washer/Dryer). For now—and most of the coming week—it will look like it does right now, like a slightly upscale refugee camp. But soon, and for some time after, it will look like a home.

My home.

And somehow, that makes it all worth it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under guest posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.