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It was 4 a.m. on a warm May morning in Dallas-Fort Worth. Why did I know that? Because I was awake. Mine was the only apartment with a pool for several blocks and the neighbor kids didn’t have school in the morning. Ah, to be young again. It was that exact moment when I decided to move from my current shoebox apartment to another shoebox apartment across town. My lease was up in a few months, and now was as good of a time as any to start that process. I just completed my first week in the new place, so I thought I’d take time to share my experiences.
Apartment hunting is still in the stone age.
I spent the better part of a month just looking around at places. Between work, Xbox, and staving off depression with various alcohols, I didn’t have much actual time to truck around and find a new place to live. I had a friend who was a realtor and promised to send me places, but he only sent me one which was entirely out of my price range (Thanks, [redacted]!). You have work “friends” who can send you referrals to their places. But let’s be realistic, you barely want to see them while you’re at work. Not to mention I was the youngest person at my office by roughly eight years. Everyone else has houses, families and kids. They hadn’t heard the word “apartment” in a decade.
There is however, a relatively new tool by which the vast majority of commerce happens over called “The Internet.” Too bad nobody ever told the apartment managers. Half the places in my area weren’t listed on any major site, the other half either didn’t list rent or didn’t list pictures. Despite all the modern conveniences the internet has provided us, I still had to drag my ass around every Saturday during the three hours that most places were actually open and find a place. Once you’re there, take what little information you had from the internet and watch as the leasing agent lights it on fire. On at least three separate occasions, the online quote was vastly lower than the “current market rate” (read: that salesman’s ass). They don’t give a shit about any prior information you have because once you’re there, their word is law. Comparable rents in your area, offers at other locations? Fuck you, you’ll pay. You always pay.
Of course, once you find a place…
Moving is expensive as hell.
Think back to when you first moved to your current address. You probably had to pay a deposit on your apartment and the utilities. That sucked, right? Now you get to pay all those things again, while currently also currently paying your existing rent. You can’t just stop paying rent at your old place just because you found a new place. You still have that lease you owe money on. Take your first check of the month and put it entirely towards rent. Take the other check and put it entirely towards a slightly higher amount. How much are you left with? Yeah, enjoy paying your bills and trying to eat this month. I seriously don’t even want to look at my credit card bill this month.
Of course, once you have a place and all those bills are paid, you have to notify your current apartment. They will be overjoyed to hear that you’re moving, because every mark you ever made on any surface is straight cash in their pocket. Splotch on the wall, gotta repaint everything. Wine stain in the living room, gotta get new carpeting. I had a small indention in the wall from where the headboard would repeatedly smack against the wall during my more vigorous bouts of drunken masturbation. $100 to caulk the indention, $200 to paint the wall. All in all, I limped away wondering if it would have been cheaper to get a lawyer and dispute the charges.
That’s not even considering the costs associated with the actual moving. Do you have friends? Like “friends that will help you move” friends? I thought I did too. Here’s a tip: pay professionals to help you move. I know this is a weird stance to take in a section of my post about how expensive it is to move, but seriously, pay the money.
Because…
You have way too much shit.
How many boxes do you think it would take to pack everything in your apartment? Now double that number. That might get you close. In a perfect world, the rules of Tetris would apply and everything would have a place. It doesn’t. Besides, once you shove everything into 8-9 boxes, it’s only then when you figure out how heavy everything is. Time to repack. You now have everything parceled out into 18 different boxes. Take a look at your kingdom. This is your entire livelihood. God Bless Capitalism.
It wasn’t until I watched my mother, God bless her, carry all my clothes to the moving truck over several trips before I thought “I’ve got too many fucking shirts”. It was about that same time that I was carrying a solid oak coffee table with my father and two “best” “friends” (read: the guys who showed up to help me move) that I thought “Why do I have a 300 lb. coffee table?”
Moving is a great opportunity to figure out what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. Obviously there’s stuff you want to keep, but do you still need all your DVDs when you have Netflix? Do you still need all those oxfords that are a size too small because you still tell yourself you’ll lose the weight? You don’t, and you won’t. Sell your DVDs at Half-Price Books, throw your old clothes at the nearest homeless person, and celebrate your new apartment with beer and a four-hour binge of Forensic Files. Start counting the days until you get to do it all over again. .
Image via Tupungato / Shutterstock.com
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DisasterMaster
I'm the guy that pushes the big red button to turn on the tornado sirens. Sorry in advance.
@nlagrassa
nicholas_1901
It’s nice that you were honest with us about what caused the dent in the wall, but lie about that to anyone else, okay?
At my old apartment, my fraternity brother that was an Afghanistan vet came over. We were fucking around with my guns (not loaded) because he wanted to show me proper bayonet technique (the gun is from 1943). That bastard decided to show “correct technique” right through my drywall. Lost out on my security deposit.
I would have slapped some Spackle and some paint on that sonofabitch and called it a day. No one’s taking my security deposit.
Spackle, gotta love that name. Most of my guns hang out around the house on coffee tables and in drawers but hunting knives and ammo stay in the safe. Hopefully it was an M1 Garand and not a POS Commie rifle.
It was a POS commie rifle. I collect old guns and keep them from bubba ruining history. The bayonet for the m39 I have costs as much as the gun. Garand is up next on my list of stuff I want and CMP is a 4 hour drive.
So is it an actual M39 from the Finns? Because those are actually excellent rifles (and expensive) in comparison to the Russian M91’s. I have a bunch of older firearms back home, mint M1 Garand (Korea), several High Standard .22s (WWII-70’s), M1 Carbine (Vietnam), etc… Nothing foreign though.
It takes maybe 30 minutes to fix that
I’m much more of a laissez-faire kind of guy when it comes to moving. Agree with hiring the movers. I would add hiring a professioal cleaning company. They will do a much better job than you ever will, and in 2 hours instead of 8. Also, using toothpaste to cover up holes in drywall works way better than you would think. As far as big holes, my buddy put basically a railroad track pin through drywall to hang a deer head one year. We just kept applying small amounts of the $10 tube of bathroom caulk at a time to repair it until it was completely covered.
After that, I say fuck it, and let the apartment complex have their way with me.
First rule of moving… Get a big ass garbage bag and throw away all the useless shit you acquired since moving in.
Also for the love of God if you’re changing states and getting a new car make sure you don’t get it before you leave. Getting it re-registered is going to run me at least a grand.
Don’t re-register it. Just update your insurance.
I know so many people that have had disasters with U-Haul. You reserve a truck for the day of your move, but when you go to pick it up, they tell you they don’t have any trucks left and you have to drive to another location to get your reserved truck. It added an extra 3 hours of driving to my move. Their customer service is worthless. You’ve been warned.
I’m moving 5.5 hours to Chicago tomorrow. I wish this had been published two weeks ago hahaha
So accurate. We had decided to renew our lease and not deal with the pain of moving. Then one of us got relocated out of state for work. So now we’re packing up and moving in 2 weeks. Only 1/2 of relocation is being covered. Not looking forward to packing. Time to start throwing shit out.
Negotiating loaders and unloaders into your relocation package. PGPM.
I am living this right now, I live in a fairly cheap city but it cost me upwards to 800 dls between renting a u haul, hiring a moving company (I don’t care if I won’t eat for a week, I am not moving my shit 2 stories) deposits and fees (don’t get a dog till you have 300 dls at least to thrown on a pet deposit).
Stop using dls.
dls=”Dead Lizard Sperm?”