Yep. It does. It’s really unnerving to know that all your worldly possessions are boxed away into a rented truck and precariously making their way down the street.

I have been lucky to have stayed in the same apartment for three years, but now that my husband is in Louisiana for a while for school, we cannot afford to send him to school and pay for an apartment simultaneously. We thought we would be able to but, alas, we didn’t get private loans. So my parents, who luckily also live in DC, offered for me to move in with them. Just as well really because I love my parents and get along well with them and this way we can pay for my hubby’s school with less loans and more cash (ie. cash that used to go to rent).

So I have been boxing up our apartment, cursing myself for not dusting more over the years, taking Claritin cause I’m allergic to dust, and trying to figure out what goes in what box and whether that box goes into storage or goes to my parent’s house cause I may need it. Normally I would love the organizing that goes along with packing but it’s never enjoyable when you are stressing about grad school papers that need to be written and have to be out of your apartment in a few days. Honestly, I wish now that I had gotten friends to come over to help me pack last weekend cause now it’s crunch time. I’m bad at asking for help and have had so much sorting to do that it can be hard to get someone else to do it with me. Well, maybe that’s an excuse cause I would much rather watch “The Office” than pack.

So, how’s my move frugal? Well, I’m not paying for boxes. I have never actually paid for boxes for any time I have moved and instead have just pilfered empty xerox boxes from work, my mom has done the same, and I have gone recycling bin diving at Starbucks because Starbucks conveniently has sturdy cardboard boxes that they break down and put in a separate cardboard recycling container so they aren’t mixed in with the trash. I started to worry that I would be short on boxes so when I went to sign the paperwork for my storage unit (which I comparison shopped for and got a good deal online for), I figured I would break down and buy some boxes from the storage company. I figured they couldn’t be all that expensive because, after all, its just cardboard. Same thing my cereal box is made out of.

Wrong. The storage company was selling the boxes for around $3.00 a box, and more for larger boxes. I was so shocked that my penny pinching jaw literally dropped open. F that. I panicked for a bit that I would be moving in trash bags, which is by all means ok, but hard to use for anything that’s heavy. But then I remembered that I have always found boxes and I figured that panic doesn’t help. So I went home, ate dinner, and sanity returned. I’ve been working off a motherload of empty xerox boxes that I found in the basement at work and they are all too glad to have me take them so they don’t have to cart them off to be recycled. I can take three home every day via the metro, and my mom has been doing the same. Then when I bring over stuff to my parent’s house in the evening, I pick up the boxes. That’s 6 boxes a day x 5 days this week = 30 boxes. Yeah. I’m fine on boxes 🙂 And I didn’t pay a dime for them.

And the moving truck, well I also reserved it online and found the location closest to me with the best online price. And I sold some stuff on Craigslist to raise money to pay for it. Sweet.

So wish me luck this weekend as I haul furniture into my storage unit along with my pack of awesome friends and clean the bejesus out of my apartment (I’m getting that security deposit back damn it!). 🙂