After months of excitedly texting my roommates, online shopping for my dorm, and trying to condense my wardrobe to about half its size, move in day is finally here. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my car trying to distract myself as my 2 1/2 hour car ride to Austin has just begun. Yesterday I had to say goodbye to the honorary Gray Family members, my dogs, as we brought them to a dog hotel, and today I said goodbye to my cats (after having them for 9 years I still can't tell if they like me). Without my dogs barking 24/7 my house felt strangely quiet as I packed up the last of my things, and eventually driving out of my driveway and watching my house slowly disappear through my rearview mirror, it felt like an overly dramatic scene from a movie. Cue "The House that Built Me" by Miranda Lambert. This morning, I decided I want to document my move-in process as I experience it so that I can look back and remember everything a year from now. Happy Move-in Day!
1. Just packed up my car! Just kidding I was supposed to wake up at like 8am to help load up my stuff but it's currently 9:20 and I'm still in bed.
2. Ok so I just walked downstairs expecting my parents to be livid that I slept in but my mom just hugged me and the piles and piles of boxes that I was expecting to have to carry have already been loaded into the car. Shoutout to my parents and my brother... did not expect to have such a peaceful morning.
3. The inevitable picture session!! Pictures in front of the house and pictures in front of my luggage-filled car in the Houston humidity... not banking on those coming out cute at all. I started this morning with my hair own wanting to looksemi-presentable but I tied it up the second we stopped taking pictures4. Driving away dramatically from my house and taking a snapchat of everything saying "Bye HTX" because I'm feeling sentimental.
5. My brother just spilled his drink all over my dad's shirt... this drive is off to a great start.
6. So the weather forecast said it was going to rain so I put all of my stuff in trash bags last night and labeled them. It isn't raining...at all.
7. After a few wrong turns we finally got to Austin and unloaded all of my belongings!
8. Update: It turns out we unloaded my stuff at the wrong building (it has now begun to rain I might add), but some very kind frat boys offered to help bring my stuff to the correct building! We eventually brought all of my stuff up to the second floor but it was absolute chaos. I have never seen so many boxes in my life but passing by rooms and seeing everyone put together their dorms made me so excited to start putting things together.
9. Once I got the ball rolling with unpacking, I was on a mission. With the help of my parents I fixed up my bed and began organizing my closet, which where things that I thought were going to be time consuming, but really weren’t. Surprisingly, the part that took the longest was hanging up my deer head and my cork board. I had bought some really intense command strips so I wasn’t worried about hanging them, but the command strips failed me and refused to work as they had advertised. My dad ended up nailing holes in the wall (oops) and he probably wanted to kill me as I kept telling him that my pictures were crooked and that he needed to tilt them.
10. Just got my room to look pretty mediocre so I’m thinking this is a good halfway point for a taco break.
11. After some good ole Torchy’s Tacos we got ready for round two of making my room into a home. Working efficiently as a team, we finally put the finishing touches on my room and we soon realized that goodbye was coming.
12. Walking outside of my dorm with my parents and hugging them, knowing that this time the “goodbye” was real was a strange feeling. Seeing their car drive away, the goodbye feels so permanent, and I feel a mixture of fear, relief, excitement, and nervousness as I finally feel like I’m putting on my big girl pants.
13. Hope you all have had or will have a great move-in day, and may your year be filled with everything you could’ve hoped for. Best of luck to everyone beginning college!
