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Deadly Hippos Moving Advice
06/30/06
by Shaw

Right now (RIGHT NOW) at this moment, I am moving out of my apartment. Actually, strike that. I have moved out of my apartment, but my roommates have not quite done so. If you've ever moved before, you know that the worst part of moving out of an apartment is the last few hours, when you have to clean up all the garbage and sacrifice some things that you purchased but which you can't fit or don't need anymore. This part is not labor-intensive, it's mostly just annying, so you don't involve your friends in it because they would just be in the way, plus it's not their apartment so they shouldn't be involved in cleaning out the trash... which is what makes my move so horrible. You see, what is INFINITELY worse than the last few hours of moving out of your own apartment is doing the same thing in someone else's. By way of explanation, on behalf of Deadly Hippos and Hipponation, I present to you the official Deadly Hippos Moving Guidelines:

1. If you live with 3 or more people, absolutely, under no circumstances, should you allow yourself to be the last person to move out. Trust me, this is a horrible idea. You will want to call your roommates and complain about how much work they have left for you but it won't do any good once they don't have keys. They are GONE.

2. If you ever move into an apartment as the new roommate to a place that is currently occupied, find out how long it has been occupied. If it is over 15 years, do NOT move in. The reason? Maybe your roommates have lived there 5 years, which is one thing... but the people there before them lived there for 5 years too and the people before them... which means that despite the fact that no one has lived there more than 5 years, there are still 15 years worth of garbage in the goddamn place. Garbage like:

• A large standing CPU from 1989.
• Two nonworking televisions.
• 4 mattresses.
• Two cabinets full of expired cleaning supplies.
• Enough dust to feed into a loom and weave an entire blanket out of... a dried human skin, flaked plaster, and pubic hair blanket (or, if your newborn or toddler will be using it, "blanky").
• 20 lbs worth of empty plastic grocery bags (think about how many of those little bags it would take to weigh 20 lbs. That is seriously what I am dealing with right now).
• Five (5) ugly, nonmatching tables.
• Assorted cookie sheets, cakepans, and pizza pans... these are things that, for some reason, people never feel like moving but always find that they need as soon as they move into some other place.

3. Never under any circumstances allow someone else to pack anything of yours. This sounds like a lot more work, but trust me, it's not more work than going through a pile of garbage trying to find your $50 gold-plated money clip just because your roommate thought it didn't look valuable enough. On the flipside, never pack anyone else's stuff for them either, because you will find yourself questioning why you were ever friends with someone that has a bag filled - FILLED - with empty penny-roller papers.

4. General rule of thumb: don't keep any boxes or bags in your apartment. You might think: Gee, I should keep this box, what if I decide to bring it with me when I move? Here's what's really going to happen: you're going to pack that thing up, whatever it is, first, and then, when you leave, you will totally forget that you still had the original box. Consider that you will probably purchase about 50 things in boxes every year, and that really adds up.

5. If you are lucky enough to have an apartment with a storage space, don't under any circumstances use it. There is no reason to put anything into long term storage: if you don't need it, throw it out or give it to someone who does.

6. To MY future roommates, if you buy something that you think you will be leaving for me to throw out later, let me know when you buy it so I can just throw it out for you that day and save us both the trouble.

7. If you find yourself straying from the hard task of moving to sit down and write a column for your website, your break's over already, and get back to goddamn work.

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