Moving Home During a Crisis

How to peacefully exist in your childhood bedroom

By Grace Augustin

Whether we wanted to or not, many of us have moved back to our hometowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With nothing but a basket of dirty laundry, our laptops, and a feeling of uncertainty about what the next few months would bring, we made the journey back home. 

Many of us quickly realized that this transition was not going to be easy. Maybe our bedrooms had been converted into a storage closet, our younger selves thought having neon green walls would be cute, or our siblings got the misguided impression that they could take over our bedroom. Regardless, this would be our home for the foreseeable future and we, being the adaptive college students that we are, needed to make the best of it. 

So we put on our interior designer hats and got to work. That high school yearbook and stack of old birthday cards you could never throw away got packed up and replaced with plants and scented candles. The clothes you kept at your parents’ house even though they will never fit you again were stored away, and the sweatpants you brought home took their place.

However, we must not forget that the worst part about moving back into our childhood bedrooms was not the storage bins or the unsightly paint job, but rather the feeling that came with being back. The feeling that, by moving into your old room, you were once again a child. The feeling that things were out of your control. That your freedom was being taken away.

So we spent time with our families, we reconnected with our roommates, and we made sure our friends were doing okay. Why? Because we knew that if we were feeling this way, those we care about probably were too.