Photo courtesy of Nicolas Huk//flickr
At the end of the year, all out-of-state students are plagued with the same dilemma: How do I move my stuff back home? Your roommate who lives 30 minutes up the road doesn’t understand why you’re so stressed out. She has been taking her stuff back home little by little throughout this semester, while your side of the room keeps expanding like a black hole. To save you one less sleepless night, here are four of your best options.
Ship it home:
Not too worried about maxing out a few credit cards? Pack those heavy mementos and souvenirs and flat-rate them home. It may take a small fleet of Spanish armadas to carry all the boxes you’ve packed to your local post office, but just close your eyes and sign on the dotted line. Yes, shipping goods home is a viable option when you can’t fit everything into your 12 carry-ons, but this may not be the most economical option. For the more economical of shipping option there’s a new company called the ‘Greyhound Package Express‘ which as it’s name indicates ships your package via Greyhound.
Pack it up and drive:
Fancy yourself a summer road trip? Hopefully, for your 16th birthday you picked a load-bearing mini-van instead of a cute Jetta because you’re going to need all the room your poor car can spare. If you’re anything like me, hopefully you’ve vacuumed out your car before you pack it tight because that sweet raccoon family that’s been in your trunk all year may not be too happy once you’ve reached your destination. The victory you feel once the car is loaded may be unparalleled, just live in constant vigilance so your windows aren’t broken out at any of the pitstops and and as a result, your expensive Mac gone with the wind.
Store it over the summer:
Malibu offers a bevy of storage facility options. One is even hidden right in our backyard of Country Mart, but it’s true the farther away you travel from Malibu the cheaper storage facilities are, big surprise. Also, as you’ve seen in your email’s Spam folder, there is a service called Campus Storage that advertises “stress free moving.” Moving is stress-free until you look at their prices. Storage costs are per item with a simple 17″ x 17″ x 22” storage box racking up at $15.49 a month. Can you say, as if?
At this point many students are discouraged, final exams have just ended and they go for the last and most extreme of options.
Toss-it:
Throwing away dorm room items is much more common than any poor college kid would like to admit. When Malibu’s finest Spring Clean, the rest of us begin our illustrious side jobs as a dumpster diver. While the rule “if it’s broken don’t bring it home” stands, many take the next step and decide if it stills works, don’t bother hauling it home. But before you do, if those Bed Bath & Beyond sheets aren’t really your style anymore, think about donating to the convenient Salvation Army pick-up on lower dorm row instead of the dumpster.
While overall, packing your (or your parent’s) car up is the best of all the unfortunate options, hopefully you remind yourself next year you don’t need half the stuff you brought. Seriously.
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