It’s a universally acknowledged truth that moving is the worst. Sure, it might be exciting to decorate a new place from scratch or explore a new neighborhood, but everything that comes before that is pretty nightmarish: packing, cleaning, selling furniture, realizing just how much you’ve been hoarding in your junk drawer…the list goes on.
I’ve spent the past month tackling the arduous process of vacating my home of seven years. And even though I’m looking forward to a new apartment—and a housewarming party at some nebulous point in the future—I needed a more immediate incentive to keep me from descending into a cardboard-box-shredding meltdown.
While I’m not moving far enough to warrant a going-away party (a whopping two miles), I’m definitely sentimental about leaving the place where I spent the majority of my adult life so far. Which is how I came up with the idea for a “housecooling” party—and it turned out to be a much-needed bright spot during an otherwise stressful month.
For starters, it was the perfect opportunity to finish off the handful of bottles of wine I’d been hanging onto, along with various pantry and freezer items (looking at you, bag of Chinatown dumplings). Plus, unlike a housewarming, which usually requires getting your new digs in tip-top shape (the whole point is to “show off” a bit, no?), this was the perfect zero-pressure gathering: Everyone knew I was moving, so the fact that half the living room was in boxes was almost a given.
