When that dreaded time—the end of your lease—comes around, you might be moving to a new space in a different part of the city. Here are all the struggles you’ll go through on your journey from Washington Heights to Dumbo:
1. When you start to pack everything up, you wonder how you can possibly own this much stuff
2. You have to decide whether to keep it, sell it, or chuck it
3. And you inevitably end up keeping most things
![[Mike G/Flickr]](https://secretnyc.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/moving-boxes-2.jpg)
5. So you need to find someone who has a truck, or rent a U-Haul
6. And then, of course, you haven’t driven in at least a year
7. So this is you while you’re driving the damn thing:
8. And if you have an insane amount of stuff, you might have to make multiple trips
9. You also need people to help you carry things
10. But nobody wants to help you move
11. Even the people you thought you could count on most will turn into flakes when you ask them to help you move
12. So you have to bribe people with homemade baked goods
13. Or pay them, but you’re already broke because this is New York
14. And don’t you dare tell your helpers that the building is a walk-up
15. You’ll feel bad about lying, but they won’t show up unless they think there’s an elevator
16. Because when there’s not, this happens:
17. Sometimes people bring things into your new apartment in the wrong order
18. You can’t fit your bed in your room because your dresser is already in there
19. You’re looking around and wondering how you can fit all these things in such a small space
20. You also forgot which things you put in which boxes
21. You might feel so hopeless that you just live like this for three months:
23. And you can’t cook anything
24. So you’re a hermit surviving on only take-out food
25. The only solution is to live in your current apartment for as long as you possibly can
Cover photo credit: Cameron Adams/Flickr