The unavoidable cost of moving

No matter what, moving is expensive. There’s the cost of time: sorting through your belongings, figuring out what you want to put in storage, what you want to bring to the new place, what you’re going to sell at a garage sale or donate and give away.

There’s the cost of buying boxes, packing material and extra large plastic wrap for your furniture, paying for extra luggage or movers, setting up mail forwarding, paying for my first month’s rent and security deposit.

Then after you get there, the cab from the airport instead of the AirTrain or other public transit, maybe a hotel for the first night, buying basic items like a new hamper, lamp, sheets, kitchen stuff and groceries, setting up new accounts for things like banking, internet, gas and electricity, even loading up a new Metrocard, Presto or other public transportation program.

It’s a lot.

As a frugal person, I have spent so much money the last six weeks doing all of these things. It hit me when I wondered today, why am I so tired? I’m not that sleep-deprived. I eat okay. I like a lot of the people  and professors in my classes.

Then I realized I had failed to recognize how the process of moving also costs energy, especially when it’s only my second time leaving Toronto, and my first time living on my own.

And I already had help. I flew my mother down to help me during the first week and I had been regularly visiting New York for years. But I still feel overwhelmed. Trying to figure out school stuff – the classes, the professors, the campus, events, and of course the mountains of reading and assignments right off the bat – while at the same time trying to quickly learn where to buy groceries or order items like a vacuum is a lot.

I have stopped stressing out at how big my credit card bill is this month. Nothing I’m buying is particularly extravagant. I figure it is all part of the cost of getting where I need to go and what I need to do. And that’s worth being kinder to myself.