Move-in has to be simultaneously the most looked-forward-to and most dreaded time in the college year.

I love the change of pace — the new location in the city, the bonds I make with the friends I’m living with, the fun interior decorating — but god, is it all a hassle.

In traditional Kyra fashion, I put off packing up any of my things until about 9 p.m. the day before I had to leave. Saying “the day before” makes it sound like I could’ve had a reasonable amount of time to do this. I gave myself 12 hours.

I was supposed to have the help of my parents, but my father landed himself an impromptu trip to the Emergency Room, so I was left to my own chaotic devices.

Thankfully, my roommate was bringing most of the big furniture, so I only had to worry about the things I couldn’t live without until my parents had time to visit.

I put as much of my closet as I could into garbage bags and hauled them to my car. I packed up boxes and bins and played Tetris in the back of my Prius.

By 4 a.m., I had the majority of my life packed up, and I put myself to bed.

With a Bubbl’r in my cup holder, I pulled out of my driveway at 9 a.m. sharp (give or take 15 minutes) and started off on my 4-hour drive to school. Coincidentally, the same amount of time I had slept.

My first time walking into my new home made me believe in love at first sight. It was a beautiful, open space with incredible light and gorgeous woodwork. 

My roommate Kenzie and I picked this place out while I was abroad, so all I knew about it was from her description and a short video.

I spent the next 30 minutes glowing with excitement as I unpacked my car and fully changed my outfit. Then I hopped back into my car for another hour and a half to drive to Minneapolis for the Noah Kahan concert that night.

The next day, I drove back from Minneapolis and Kenzie drove up from her hometown and we began the true moving process.

We made many trips to her last apartment to clean it out and transport furniture and clothes. We ended up selling her old couch because it was too big for the new place. We passed it off to a girl I met when I got locked out of Kenzie’s building, and we experienced a sitcom-like 20 minutes trying to move the couch up two floors.

Kenzie and I visited a thrift store and bought our beloved “new” couch together. We needed a couch small enough for our living room, but the more immediate issue was finding one that would fit in her car. Kenzie and I did a lot of guesstimating and ended up getting lucky.

The real challenge, though, was getting the couch through our door, which of course we didn’t think about until we had it halfway up the stairs to our porch.

The effort it took to transport said couch was borderline comical. Endearingly, we started to refer to ourselves as “Dumber and Dumbest,” since “Dumb and Dumber” didn’t seem to sufficiently cover it.

We spent the next few days transporting two desks, a coffee table, a mattress, a headboard, four shelves and a dresser into our home and up numerous stairs, all in between Kenzie’s work and my class.

I ended the week with so many bruises on my legs that people would stop to ask me if I was alright, and Kenzie landed herself a nice bump on the head. This could be due to me dropping my end of a desk going up the stairs, but who really knows?

Despite my immediate infatuation with the house, the more we explored, the more problems seemed to materialize. 

We scrubbed our house top to bottom since our first walk-through left the bottom of my socks black. I used to be scared of killing bugs, but I’ve killed so many spiders since move-in that I’ve decided I need to re-sage the space to cleanse the energy.

Kenzie’s room turned out to be a glorified porch that she more-or-less lovingly refers to as an “extension of the wilderness.”

We called maintenance for the first time about a week into our stay to completely clean out her windows and fix the screens because they seemed to house their own ecosystem.

We’ve called maintenance at least five times since then for a variety of issues. The most traumatic call was upon the discovery of our third roommate, a mouse.

Kenzie dealt with the initial trapping herself, and we spent an afternoon cleaning mouse poop off of every surface in our kitchen and taping up holes in the cabinets.

The many challenges we’ve faced thus far have left us slightly resentful toward our property management company, but also very resourceful and appreciative of the space we’ve created.

Our house is just so “us.” It’s full of colors and fun decor, plus silly accessories we’ve picked up over the years and souvenirs from our travels.

Our hard work and vision for our fixer-upper has really put the “dream” in “dream house.”

Price can be reached at [email protected].