As someone who has vacated a residence upwards of three times now, I am aware of exactly one good thing about the process of moving: You get to eat out, or, at the very least, go to the grocery store and buy fantastically unhealthy preprepared food.

This was the case for my last meal in my Trigo Road home. All of my food having long since been eaten or packed away along with my dishes and silverware, I knew I had to make my final dinner in my first Isla Vista abode something that didn’t require eating apparatuses or excessive cleanup.

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting on my bed watching the “Pride and Prejudice” miniseries on my computer – the only thing left in my eerily bare bedroom – with a tube of Pillsbury cookie dough and an IBC root beer. I remember thinking that the whole moving out procedure isn’t that bad of a deal after all.

However, I only came to this realization after about a week of box labeling, refrigerator scrubbing and landlord calling. At one point in my life, I had pictured my 20-year-old self utterly grown-up: married, president and the owner of Disneyland. Instead, I found myself up to my elbows in packing tape and calling my parents every 10 minutes to ask about change of address forms, security deposits and the statute of limitations for aggravated assault.

I was certain I was going to kill at least one of my four housemates before the move-out process was finished.

Two of the smarter ones skipped town early, which meant they also got out of any cleaning duties – a fact that left me extremely annoyed, especially after cleaning out one of the wayward housemate’s kitchen cabinets and smelling of rotten potato juice, even after aggressive showering.

My parents were helpful and patient in dealing with all of my complaints and offered some very useful advice. In regard to dealing with my roommates, they advised me – in a very kindergarten teacherish fashion – to use my words.

Unfortunately, they did not instruct me as to which words to use and because of that two of my ex-housemates and I are currently in the midst of a 14-day “grace period” in which none of us are contacting each other. I have a feeling that now that we don’t inhabit the same tiny space, we will love each other just as much as we ever did, provided we never speak of this horrible time again.

Another part of moving out that I find to be especially painful is the week and a half that I am spending living out of my car. There is about a 10-day interim between old place and new place in which I staying with a friend and storing all of my belongings in my trusty ’89 Camry. She’s a good car, but definitely not intended to be stuffed to the brim with all of my possessions. Every time I open any of the doors or the trunk, at least three things fall out – the most embarrassing thus far being a pink bra.

A high school boyfriend once spent about the same amount of time living out of his car and I made fun of him to no end. He informed me that someday I would be in the same position. When it happened, he would rejoice in it, no matter where he was.

Laugh it up, bastard.

With the beautiful benefit of retrospect, I feel like I can say that moving out of my old house and my old life wasn’t really all that bad, but the “Screw you and this crappy house” written in cookie dough on my bedroom wall tells a very different story indeed.

Stacey Redd is a junior CCS literature major.