Move-in week is typically considered a nuisance. After all, nobody likes sharing the road with a bunch of 20-year-olds who have no business piloting a scooter, let alone a U-Haul, and there is something fairly depressing about the knowledge that the relative peace and quiet we’ve been enjoying for the last few months is about to come to an end. Take it from someone who lives next door to a sorority house: nothing makes you feel like an old fogey quite like finding a used condom in your hostas.
However, before you get all doom-and-gloom, I highly recommend you take a folding chair and some snacks and set yourself up outside the Pink Palace for a few hours. Last weekend, I watched two roommates argue about whether to put a Pride flag or a Black Lives Matter flag up in their living room window, which was adorably Iowa City, and a guy fall down a flight of stairs while holding a box of kitchen implements, which was actually really sad. Other highlights included a couple who were trying, and failing, to sneak a bunch of plant food and grow lights into their apartment, and a girl who thought she could fit an entire apartment’s worth of stuff into her mom’s Subaru, which brings me to my favorite thing about move-in week: free furniture.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see a box of someone else’s stuff on the sidewalk, I’m interested. Who am I, a Rockefeller? However, it is possible to preserve one’s dignity while shamelessly sponging off of college sophomores. Tips are as follows:
– Don’t waste your money on Ikea products. Anything you’ve seen in their catalog will be available in the Dumpster behind Studio 13 before the end of the summer.
– Scratched nonstick pans can release cancer-causing chemicals, so it’s best to avoid them, along with any dinged-up knives, which might have been used to murder someone. That’s not necessarily unhealthy, it’s just bad karma.
– If you’re over 25, the most futons you can have at one time is two. I know they’re absolutely everywhere, but resist the temptation to fill your apartment with them, like some kind of flea-ridden padded room.
Happy shopping!
This article was originally published in Little Village issue 297.
