The time has come, the time is near, or you're getting ready and preparing for that time. It's getting way too close to the move in date to put it off any longer, so it's time to pack up your things to move to college. Packing your room can be exciting, stressful, and all around emotional. It's also kind of fun, if we can all admit it. The steps to packing are all significant and have all been experienced by anyone who has had to go through it. These are the seven stages of packing your room to go to college.
1. Excitement.
The first step to packing your room is the excitement of actually packing your room. In this stage, you don't actually DO any packing, but this is the stage where you sit on the floor and admire all of the dorm supplies you bought. Oh, and you're also probably sitting among piles of clothes and stacks of paperwork from high school. This is not the time to worry about that. This is the time to daydream about your dorm room and imagine the perfect move in day.
2. Cleaning.
The second stage to packing your room is finally getting around to cleaning out all the junk in your room. Recycling all your old high school English tests, giving all your unwanted clothes to charity, throwing away that one Play-Doh statue you made in, like, third grade. It becomes very clear that you actually had a lot of space in your room that you could have definitely utilized. Oh, well. Now it's going to become the new guest bedroom.
3. Nostalgia.
The third step goes almost hand in hand with the second. While cleaning out your room, you come across a lot of old memories. Pictures with friends, birthday cards from six years ago, notes passed in class ... There's a lot in your room that's totally worth stopping the whole process to take about three hours to take the time to bask in the memories.
4. Procrastination.
The fourth stage is probably the most prominent, and the one literally everyone experiences. You have two weeks, right? That's totally enough time. You don't even have that much stuff, really, it won't take that long. Besides, you only have two weeks left at home! It's the time to go swimming, go to the beach, hang out with friends! Packing can TOTALLY wait. It'll take two hours, really.
5. PANIC.
The fifth stage is the one that comes after you've spent the last week thinking, "packing can totally wait!" Well, now you have five days until you move, and you have two pairs of socks in a box and nothing else is done. This is go time.
6. Packing.
This sixth step is where you get crap done. You figure out that you really don't need your entire wardrobe, and you definitely don't need to bring 10 pairs of jeans. This is when your parents play an important role. You want to feel like an adult, you want to try making your own choices. But when your mom tells you that you should take extra underwear, please listen to her.
7. Go-time.
The final stage comes after all the others, because it is the stage where you pack up your car and you hit the road. You say goodbye to your house, your pets, your siblings, and you finally say goodbye to the room you've lived in your whole life. The room you just spent the last three weeks cleaning, purging, and packing, is no longer truly yours. You now have a new home, one that you're going to make your own.
Moving to college takes a lot of planning and a lot of time, put the actual packing of your room is the hardest. Make it fun, and be excited! You're going to college!
