Moving Tips for the College Freshman

So you’re moving to college. You’re really excited, but you’re also really nervous. You want to appear super casual about the whole thing, but you also want to make good choices in the process. Who wants to go broke over a move? Basically nobody. Well, lucky for you, you aren’t the first person to move to college. There have been many, many, many people before you, and they have plenty of good advice (usually based on their own botched experiences), on how to make it as painless as possible

Best piece of advice ever: shipping supplies are your friend.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that you have belongings and that you need to get them from point A to point B. Unfortunately, your My Little Pony collection isn’t going to spontaneously float from the knick knack shelf in your parents’ house to the dusty spot under the bed in the dorm room. You need to pack them up, and do it well.

I said shipping supplies are your friend, and I meant it. So make sure you set yourself up for success. Don’t use old boxes that are already bowed in and completely creased. It takes very little for a cardboard carton to bust open and spill your unmentionables. You know how when you bite a spot inside your mouth you keep biting that same spot for weeks? It’s like that with boxes. If there’s a weak corner, that weak corner is going to get it until the entire thing just can’t take it anymore.

Don’t overstuff your boxes. You might be trying to save on resources but overstuffing your boxes will make them too heavy, therefore too vulnerable to being dropped or breaking open. It’s just not worth it. Unless The Avengers are helping you move, make sure that you have manageably sized parcels.

In this scenario, there are going to be a lot of things you already own that can second as shipping supplies. Use your hamper to pack clothes in. Use your towels and sheets to wrap breakables in. Stuff that brand new backpack to the gills. Use those index cards to mark each box with your name and the contents- understandably, if you don’t want to put “valuable DVD collection” or “first edition books” use code words so that at least you will still know what’s in them so you don’t have to start opening and closing and shuffling them all around as soon as you get to your dorm room.

Be organized, pack neatly, and the majority of the work will just involve picking up and putting down, instead of cursing and sweating and throwing and dropping. Not a great way to start off in the great, wide world.