I spent the last few days packing up all my stuff, moving it to my new apartment and then cleaning my old apartment. I lived at my last place for two years, so cleaning out all the corners and drawers just turned into a flood of old memories. Besides the general sweaty frustration of moving heavy boxes in Texas in August, I just felt incredibly sad. I found an old birthday card my ex-boyfriend’s parents had sent me while we were dating, that kind of thing.
I also felt like a huge dork, since I realized it’s fairly ridiculous to get choked up over the fact that I’ll never be able to wander into the living room and watch Ally McBeal with my roommate. After all, I’ll soon be able to wander into a whole new living room and watch the Learning Channel.
I mentioned this to my roommate, and I felt better once she said she felt the same way.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I did have a similar reaction when I moved from Houston to Austin. I packed away a lot of books and memory-filled things to put in the attic of my parents’ house.
Last time I moved from, one apartment to another, it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t have as many memories associated with it, good or bad.
Even in the best situation. I was living in a basement apartment for seven months while in the process of moving my family and finding a new job. Even though I was moving into a house I’d just bought, and my family was coming up, leaving my two-room apartment meant I was leaving a part of my live behind.
It passed quickly, though. It’s so much better having the kids back, and my wife, and the dog and the cats. Next week, I’ll be getting my books out of my in-laws garage. I haven’t seen some of them for years.
New memories will always replace the old. That helps get me over it.
Geez, I NEED to move, and it’s hard! Packing stuff up, saying goodbye to spaces you lived in, etc. When I was a kid, we moved from apartment to apartment a lot, but I’ve gotten used to putting down roots, now that I’m older.
So, don’t feel bad.
It makes sense that moving might be a depressing moment. After all, the whold thing is loaded with symbolism. You are leaving behind an old friend, and the house or apartment will always be associated with a certain time in your life (“Oh, yeah, that was when I was living in that old dump on Live Oak.”).
I’ve been a bit depressed every time I’ve moved, but it passes. Good luck.
I always used to love moving!!
My entire childhood was spent in the same house. The family lived there 17 years, and I was 15 when we moved out. Was I sad? Yes and no. I was sad to say goodbye to the only house I’d ever lived in, but we had seriously outgrown that house a long time before we moved, and it was cramped. We were moving on up in the world. So while it was hard to say goodbye, the new house was so much better that we couldn’t believe our luck.
I guess it’s that positive first move that set the tone for all the other moves I’ve made since then. At one point in my wild teenage years, I moved on average once every two months. What I like best is unpacking (second best, I like packing). Unpacking is a blast!! It’s like Christmas, but with stuff you already know and love. I’m always sitting there, surrounded by sheets of crumpled newspaper going “Wow! One of my plates! Way cool!!” “Oh, look! My teddy bears!! I remember when Nana gave me that teddy bear. Welcome back, buddy!”.
I didn’t enjoy the last move we made. We started moving our stuff on the Friday night(we were moving two blocks), and while a lot of our stuff was still in the flat, we’d moved the bed into the new house on that first night. The next morning, we awoke to the telephone ringing in the news that my dear friend had just lost her 47 year old mother to a heart attack. That was the most horrible news, and all the joy of moving was lost - it became nothing more than a back-breaking chore, and I was physically and emotionally exhausted for days. I guess the attitude you take in makes all the difference - the work doesn’t seem so hard if you face it with enthusiasm and interest. When you really want to be off comforting your friend, but you have to unpack your life first, then it’s hard work, long work and damned painful work.
I depends on why I’m moving. I’ve had to move a couple to cheaper digs and that was really depressing.
I find moving out depressing but moving in fixes it.
I hate moving. Detest. And I do it twice a year for school.
You see, I am homelover of a person. I need a space that is my own and where I am safe. I need to know that I can go out and be wild and crazy and whatever, but that when I come home I’m home. Still. Lovely. Safe. Quiet. Perfect. Mine. Home.
I hate the upset feeling of putting Home into boxes and resettling it. It bothers me to no end.
I’m this* :holds fingers real close together: *close to starting a Pit thread on why I hate moving. It depresses me, not because of the memories left behind, but because I have to deal with realtors who have a racist scumbag:incompetent sludgewit:functional human being ratio of 5:7:1.
Bite me, Century 21.
–sublight.
Last month my partner and I purchased our first home. And while we’re thrilled with our new home, moving out was depressing as hell.
Our old apartment had three people living in it: me, my partner, and his friend from college Molly. They had been living together for six years, and the three of us had been living in the same building for the past four of those. It was home. We knew the people in the other apartments, knew all of the guys who worked in the deli across the street, the waiter in the diner we went to knew how we liked our burgers. And I loved the location [Times Square in Manhattan]. The deli was always open, the movie theater was down the block, Broadway. People would ask where I lived and I got to say “Times Square.”
We were all depressed when we moved out. We were leaving a great building, a nice apartment, [queue violins] and each other. Molly was in tears as we were loading the trucks. But it was time. [This is starting to sound more like a breakup than a move. :)] And we love our new place. We have a big kitchen, a backyard, a driveway…all of the things I missed from the suburbs [and I’m just 15 min from Manhattan].
But definitely packing up was more depressing than moving in. Moving in was fun; I agree with cazzle–like Christmas.
[hijack]
Last year, I donated a car to charity that I had been driving for about thirteen years. Got a great new car with sunroof, A/C, AT, AM/FM Cass, bunch of extras the old car didn’t have.
Cried like a baby when they hauled her away.
[/hijack]
I like moving out, hate moving in. When I move in, it seems I’m never done. Where does this go? Where does that go? What the heck is this even? How can I make the furniture fit? How can I get this into this room?
When I move out, it’s easier. I have a goal: To get all the stuff out of the old place. I can see actual progress being made, and it’s kind of fun to pull out things that I had almost forgotten about, until I realized I had to move them.
I agree with others who’ve posted here–moving out is a bit depressing, but moving in is fun because you have a new place to explore. Unpacking isn’t always so much fun, but I hate how my mother-in-law insists on completely unpacking you right as you move in. That’s very unsettling. It may take us a bit more time, but my husband and I would prefer to unpack ourselves and settle ourselves into our new place. That’s why we don’t let MIL help with any more of our moves.
I have to agree with Medea’s Child that moving twice a year for college is the worst. Sure, it’s fun to move into the dorms your freshman year, but then they kick you out for the summer. So, you go back home, and you don’t get all the fun of “moving in” because it’s not a new place, is it? Then, just as you get settled into home again, you have to pack it all up again and go back. That “transient” feeling was unsettling after a while. Not to mention all the problems I had with getting my mail to go to the right place. The college is annoyed that so many people want apartments off-campus, but you have to do that just to keep your sanity :). At least you can stay there over the summer if you want to.
We’re moving next month and I’m dreading it. We’ve lived here over 3 years and it was our first home together. And our last, for a while. That is, we’re not going to have a permanent home for some time. Instead we’re shipping all our things to the States to store in my parent’s attic, and thenceforth will indefinitely be spending ~ 8 months of the year on a supertanker, and ~ 2 months each in the US and UK. Although I’m looking forward to actually seeing my husband every day (currently he’s at sea 6 months of the year), I’m dreading the moving process and not having our own house where I can be comfortably surrounded by our own things. However, I am eager to clear out all the junk we don’t need to keep anymore. I just need to figure out whether it’s worth shipping things like bedding and cake tins, or whether we should just buy new ones when we eventually settle down again.
I’m moving for my first year of college tomorrow morning.
On one hand, it’s been incredibly exciting…and on the other…yes, it has been way too depressing. I kept finding notes from old friends and ex-boyfriends, letters from pen pals that I haven’t heard from in months.
The worst, I think, was a letter from a friend that I had a huge falling-out with at the end of this year. We stayed friends but there’s been major resentment in there.
I read her letter to me and cried like a baby.
Otherwise, though, I’m ready to move. My family has been on a mission to drive me screaming-insane this summer and have nearly succeeded. I also have a lot of things I’m ready to forget for awhile. It’s time for me to grow up.
I am in the process of trying to get rid of most of my stuff and move out and I find it very hard to do…
I recently read that when it comes to stress in one’s life, moving is up there with the death of a relative and with losing a job, the three highest.
Actually, no. I like it. I would love to move right now. Get a new place, get things in order, in a new order, maybe getting it better this time. Find a place that suits me better than this one.
So, while I can understand some of the sentimental feelings you get while packing and cleaning, I think starting fresh beats that by a mile or two.