Spoiler: It’s not glamorous. It’s just chaos.
You know what they don’t tell you when you’re moving into college? That moving out is a full-blown emotional, logistical, and physical disaster.
Right now, as I write this, everything I own is basically sitting in a pile on my dorm room floor. Clothes, notebooks, half-used candles, those weird free t-shirts from random events, three bottles of hot sauce (don’t ask) — it’s all just there, staring at me like, “Good luck with that.”
And to make matters worse? I have no help.
No car waiting outside. No family members swooping in to fold things. Just me, my tote bags, and the slow, creeping realization that I somehow accumulated enough stuff to open a small boutique. I don’t even know where half of it came from — did I buy this? Was it a giveaway? Has this been in my room since September???
The Mess is Mental, Too
It’s not just my room that’s a mess — it’s my brain.
Because moving out doesn’t just mean packing. It means leaving.
Leaving the space where I laughed, cried, overslept, met my people, wrote late-night essays, ate snacks at ungodly hours, and somehow grew into a very different version of the person who moved in nine months ago.
It’s overwhelming. And a little sad.
And also very, very dusty. Why is there so much dust under my bed???
A Few Honest Truths:
- You will underestimate how much stuff you have.
- You will find at least one item that you swear isn’t yours.
- You will try to pack “efficiently” and then give up halfway through and start chucking things into trash bags like you’re escaping a burning building.
- You will probably cry — not even because you’re sad, just because your brain short-circuited while trying to roll up your extension cord.
No One Talks About This Part Enough
Everyone romanticizes the “move-in” part of college. The fairy lights, the Target hauls, the first-day selfies. But move-out?
It’s real. It’s gritty. It smells like stale air and leftover stress.
And when you’re doing it solo, it feels like climbing a mountain with one arm and a broken suitcase.
So if you’re a first-year about to go through it, or a future student thinking, “Oh, I’ll be fine,” — just know: you will survive. But you’ll also probably be sweating, dragging a storage bin across campus like it’s a sled, and questioning your life choices along the way.
(Before I Crawl Back Into the Pile)
This isn’t a Pinterest moment. This is survival.
But weirdly? It’s kind of beautiful. Messy, unhinged, exhausting — but beautiful.
Because this chaotic move-out is proof that you lived here. That you filled this little room with so much life, you now need three duffel bags and a crisis to contain it all.
Wish me luck. Or better yet — wish me a vacuum, a storage unit, and someone with a car. And if I wasn’t already on the verge of crying — my roommate is moving out a day before me. Which means I’ll be sitting alone in a half-empty room, packing in silence and probably mourning the end of a whole era. We’ve shared so much in this space — snacks, vents, victories, and weird hallway encounters — and now it’s ending.
So yeah. Wish me luck. Or better yet — wish me a vacuum, a storage bin that doesn’t collapse, and the emotional strength to say goodbye to my first-year home.