Last night as I sat on a sleeping bag in the middle of my living room, which is empty of all furnishings save a clothes basket and a random scatter of last-minute items to be packed up, I decided the process of finding an apartment and moving into it is possibly the most excruciating task a human being could ever endure.

When I first moved to Ames, however, it didn’t seem so bad searching for an apartment. It was almost fun driving around, looking at what was available and finding out they all looked exactly the same. Out of three possible apartments, I chose the one I live in now only because the carpet had the least stains per square foot.

Even moving in wasn’t so bad. All I had to do was load my belongings into two cars and drive.

Those were the days.

After living in my apartment for a year, I had literally accumulated mountains of new furniture, doo-dads, papers and other absolute crap. I don’t understand how it happened. I guess I thought I’d need all my issues of Fitness magazine once I decide to get in shape — right now my idea of exercise is walking to the mailbox to get them. And what exactly did I think I was going to do with the leftover scraps of purple felt I found in the corner of my room? Use them in a fourth-grade art project?

I was therefore confronted with the monstrous task of reducing my apartment-full of useless acquisitions. Every single CD and book came under intense scrutiny — could I live without this Journalism 101 textbook that I couldn’t sell back to University Book Store but held on to just in case I could use it one day when I’m a “professional journalist?” Have I even listened to this Hanson CD since I was in seventh grade?

Yes, I think I would live, and no, I definitely haven’t. After all, Hanson is so five years ago and that middle sister isn’t that cute anymore.

But it was still severely painful to me to throw these things away. I have a tendency to hoard things. And, as much as it disappoints me, this act seems typical. People like to have things, to own things, and it really doesn’t matter what those things are as long as they are “cool” or at least expensive. Like the great musical “Rent” says, you are what you own.

I managed to eliminate ten trashbags full of useless junk from my apartment, and I was still confronted with a U-haul full of my belongings, which I promptly stashed in my friend’s garage. I would have had more food left to take to my new place, but ever since ants took over my kitchen in full force, I was forced to throw away anything that had over one gram of sugar in it.

Which brings me to another agonizing detail of moving — getting ready to check out of my apartment. You’ve got to clean everything until you can see your face in it, including the toilet bowl. If you don’t clean something “well enough,” you face huge reductions in your deposit returns. But that definition is pretty arbitrary to me. “Well enough” to me is making it not stink.

On a sheet included with my check-out materials, my landlord included their charges for cleaning household items such as refrigerators ($75), windows ($20 each), and toilets ($100). Those prices are ridiculous, and I’m sure I won’t get any of my deposit back anyway because they’ll see the ants dying by the hundreds on my counters and think I left them there to spite them.

I can see the conversation coming. “That’ll be an extra $200 for extermination of vermin resulting from household neglect.”

“But Mother Nature has it out for me, I swear. I didn’t exactly invite those ants in for coffee.”

“We have pictures to prove it. Pay up, or we sue you for all that you’re worth, which was $1,837 last time we checked.”

“But I just got paid.”

“We’ll take that, too. Thanks.”

I wanted to move closer to campus so I could get to classes and work faster. I wanted more space to move around in. I thought moving would solve all the motivational problems I’ve had with exercising and writing and everything else.

Now moving has just driven me crazy. It’s opened up a can of worms, nagging me about the importance of all of these things I own and why I need more space to put them in. Things are just things after all, right? I’m sick of moving them around from place to place. And what does convenience really have to do with peace of mind?

I should just grab what I can and leave town while I still have a fragment of sanity left. I don’t know if I can handle this next year when I inexplicably decide I need to move again.

As for tonight, I’ll be sleeping on my living room floor, dreaming of 10-foot-tall ants devouring the evil empire of Landlordia.