You know your adult gap year is off to a good start when on the first day you think, “at least I didn’t get stabbed with the knife that the burglar took.”
Let me back up.
Moving Day
It is 8 A.M. on March 31, 2022, and I’ve got two movers holding an empty parking space on a cramped Brooklyn street corner for the 10’ U-Haul truck that I haven’t even picked up yet. I have slept a grand total of six hours in the last three days, and honestly I shouldn’t have slept at all, because I’ve got at least seven boxes that haven’t been taped because they haven’t been labeled because at some point in the night I misplaced the one black Sharpie I was using to do the job.
11 days before the move.
Yes, I’m a procrastinator, but I’m not the kind that you’re thinking. I genuinely and massively underestimated the amount of time it would take to pack up my things in my seemingly tiny Brooklyn apartment. See, I don’t procrastinate on my to do list. What I procrastinate on is feeling my emotions. Two weeks earlier, I had my first Subway cry. I wouldn’t cry again until April, because I didn’t have time to feel my emotions until then. I was too busy unraveling the life I had built for myself in New York City.
And so, here I was, running frantically down the block to the gas station under the freeway where they kept the neighborhood U-Haul trucks, realizing halfway back to the apartment that they had given me a truck with less than a quarter of a tank of gas, and worrying that we might not make it to the PODS facility all the way out on Long Island. I had bootstrapped my move and figured out that the most cost effective option was to rent a truck myself, add on the hourly labor from the U-Haul checkout screen that was linked to the Moving Help marketplace, and book a POD(S?), which we would pack up, and then in the next 21 days it would be loaded onto an 18-wheeler, driven across the country, and left on my parents driveway for us – okay, mostly my dad – to unpack into their basement.
It was just boxes that we were moving into the POD, and despite booking the smallest POD, my boxes didn’t even halfway fill it, suddenly making my big life in the Big Apple seem oh-so-small and insignificant. I had sold all of my furniture in one fell swoop on Facebook Marketplace. A girl saw the picture of the living room I had carefully designed and wanted it for herself, which led me to have a very Toy Story moment with my cushions, as I hugged them and thanked them for comforting me, and felt gratitude that they would all be kept together.
The apartment echoed when the furniture left.
I gave away most of my plants to friends, out of fear that they wouldn’t make it three weeks in the darkness of the POD. The last two of them I managed to fly home with in a box which I had rigged up by securing the pots in a base of foam, and placing wooden sticks in the soil, secured to another piece of foam taped on the top of the box to keep the pots in place and prevent the leaves from being smashed. I checked it as a second checked bag with THIS SIDE UP graffitied all over, and was required to have an airline official check the contents of the box before sealing the contraption together. Despite the official placing stickers all over the box that it had been security cleared, TSA still opened it, and I discovered upon landing that my contraption had been dismantled and the plants smashed in the process. I’m happy to report that despite the U.S. government’s best efforts to squander the last remains of my life in New York, the plants did, in fact, make it, and are thriving under my mother’s care.
My Monstera, in 2022 and 2024.
But back to moving day, where, on my way back from the PODS facility, I side swiped another truck with my mirror. (Miraculously no damage was done to either vehicle.) After I returned the truck, I got my last iconic NYC bagel, and then arrived back at my apartment only to be yelled at by my landlords because apparently you have to wrap your mattress in plastic in New York before you leave it on the curb. With all of my packing supplies now locked away in the POD, I started taping trash bags around the mattress as a makeshift cover, and called Spectrum only to find out that my internet box must be returned in person to a location that is a 30 minute walk away. I’m supposed to leave for my flight in an hour and a half – and I haven’t even packed my suitcases.
Yes, to answer your question, I do still maintain that moving out of New York City is easier than moving in, and that I am not this kind of procrastinator, despite all the incriminating evidence I have provided you to the contrary.
And yes, we are getting to the part where I don’t get stabbed by a robber with a stolen knife.
So I do, somehow, manage to make it into a Lyft to the airport, wearing a n95 mask, because it’s March 2022 and the pandemic is still a thing, at least in New York City. My Lyft driver isn’t wearing a mask, so he decides to do that thing that all the people who resisted masks do, which is to debate your choice to wear a mask, so as to reassure themselves that the choice not to wear one is acceptable. (For the record: when I choose to wear an n95, I am protecting myself, so I don’t really care if you don’t want to wear one. But it’s really annoying that you care that I do, for someone whose reasoning generally amounts to “freedom of choice.”) My driver also decides that it’s a good time to let me know that he is anti-vaccine, because of religious reasons, he says.
“God didn’t intend it,” he explains. “It is manufactured and unnatural.”
Immediately my brain makes a few observations: he has his smartphone mounted magnetically to the dashboard, giving him directions via Google Maps to the airport, while making his income from another app by using his car. I am unable to keep these thoughts to myself.
"Well, really a vaccine is a form of technology," I say diplomatically, because we are stuck in traffic. "What are your thoughts on technology as a whole?"
“It is okay in moderation."
This is totally illogical, but this thought, I keep to myself. I can’t believe I’m about to miss my flight because I am stuck in traffic with this guy.
Fast forward to the airport where I do, somehow, manage to board my flight, but the captain doesn’t. It’s almost comical really, my day, except I’ve had no sleep and so it just feels like one really long nightmare. We wait on the plane for longer than the actual duration of the flight for the captain to show up, and he finally does, and then we are off. I’m flying to Albuquerque for two weeks, for no other reason than that the flight was cheap, and it was a place to be while waiting for the POD to be transferred to my parents’ house. I am looking forward to decompressing after the chaos that encompassed my efforts to leave New York.
It is after 1 A.M. when I arrive at my Airbnb, and... something is off. Things are strewn everywhere, and I can’t find any soap or towels. It looks like either no one cleaned, or they did and left halfway through the job. I decide it’s a problem to address with the Airbnb host in the morning, after some sleep, and I eye my bed options. One looks like it might have been slept in, but also it is the only room with the blackout curtains. So I take a picture, send it to the Airbnb host, and go to sleep.
When I wake up at 11, I have a dozen messages in the app from the host. Somehow using her security system – which the cleaner hadn’t properly enabled – she was able to figure out that the Airbnb was broken into after the cleaner came and before I arrived. And now, in the light of day, everything starts to make sense. The broken doggy door in the back. The metal rod on the floor of the laundry room. The knife sheath on the kitchen counter with no knife. The blood stains on the quilt of the bed I slept in.
On the plus side, my Airbnb was comped.
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UpgradeHere are the resources I used for my budget-friendly move in New York City, but if you have others, share them in the comments and I can update this post!
Resources for Your Move
Some of the links below may be affiliate links.
U-Haul
I used U-Haul for an in-town truck rental, and packing supplies including boxes. U-Haul has their own PODS-style storage and delivery, called U-Haul Containers, but I found PODS to be cheaper.
How to Save Money on Boxes
Buy More, Return Later
Did you know that some unused packing materials can be returned at U-Haul for a full refund? Buy more than you think you need (you will need more than you think you do) and then take them with you wherever you are moving to and return them later to any official U-Haul location. This is also helpful if you are car-less in New York City and not located near an official U-Haul store.
There is a fairly high minimum purchase requirement for free shipping on supplies with U-Haul, so I ordered way more than I needed just to meet that requirement and have all of my moving materials delivered to my apartment.
Grocery Stores Have Free Boxes
For the really budget-friendly (and environmentally-friendly) move, did you know that you can pick up free boxes at grocery stores? I particularly like grabbing the wine boxes from Trader Joe’s and using the bottle slots for fragile dishware, because U-Haul charges extra for those dish-friendly boxes.
Check Craigslist for Leftover Boxes
If you plan ahead, in the first week of the month you can search Craigslist for people offering free used boxes from their move. In New York City, it isn’t the most convenient to trek around on the Subway carrying bulky boxes, and these days, paying for a Lyft quickly becomes more expensive than having U-Haul just ship new boxes to you.
Moving Help
I booked 2 Moving Helpers for 2 hours when I was making my U-Haul truck rental reservation.
Why ask your friends for a favor when for less than $200 you can hire 2 guys for 2 hours to pick up all the heavy boxes for you? This is a no-brainer spend to me, and it’s how I moved into New York City, moved apartments in New York City, and moved out of New York City. Depending on how far you are moving you may need to book more hours, but you’d be surprised at how fast professionals can be. I found that both times that I hired Moving Helpers to move boxes both out and in, they did it within the minimum booking window.
PODS Moving & Storage
I booked a small 8' container.
Lyft
Ridesharing
https://www.lyft.com/i/CLARA104535?utm_medium=p2pi_iacc
Uber
Ridesharing
Uber Technologies, Inc.
Airbnb
For the inevitable nights in between your old home and your new one.
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