Moving for Autistic Adults: Experiences & Advice

 

At the beginning of this month, I moved away from home for the first time. I'd moved before, but always with my family, and moving 12 hours away was a big adjustment. Having moved more than 19 times in my life, I figured it would be easy, but it was more challenging than I thought it would be to uproot my life and move to an entirely new place. I thought I'd share about my experiences and offer some advice for others in the same situation.

Because I was moving so far from home, I didn't get a chance to see my house in-person before moving, and with housing demands being as high as they were in a college town, I had to move quickly unless I wanted to be stuck in the dorms when grad school started, so I joined a housing group on social media and jumped on the first few apartments that were relatively close to my budget and didn't have 80 people already commenting about their interest. I started looking for housing about a month and a half before I needed to move, and for others, I would suggest starting earlier than that. Seeing the place in-person before the move is also ideal, and I'll explain why.

When we got here, after a full day of traveling, it was getting dark out, but we could still see the bee’s nests on the roof, the spider webs in the windows, and the dust throughout the whole house. The unit had been advertised as air-conditioned, but that actually meant that I had access to two dusty air conditioning units. The windows themselves didn't have screens, but they did have a whole other window installed behind them, so whenever I want to open a window, I have to open two.

I'd prepared myself for this possibility, since I knew that renting a house sight-unseen would come with some surprises, and I'm lucky that I had an amazingly supportive family to help me with the move. This was my first time moving out of the house, even though I was going into grad school, not undergrad, and my parents were there the whole way. They got us a hotel to stay in the first night rather than braving the spidery windows. The next day, they cleaned the windows while I began unpacking boxes and organizing my kitchen. They took me to Home Depot to get a power washer for the wasp nests, as well as a few more fans so I wouldn't be roasting after moving in the middle of summer, and before they left, they filled my pantry with food so I wouldn't have to worry about shopping while still in the middle of setting up my new life away from what I knew.

If I had to move without their help, I'd like to think that I would have survived, but having their support made the process so much better than it would have been otherwise, and I got to focus more on the excitement of moving than the dread of the unexpected.

Moving is often seen as a sign of independence, but moving can't happen without help, especially if you're moving into a spidery disaster like my house used to be. I can't understate how much I appreciated having my family along for the ride.

It's been about a month now, and my house is fully unpacked, my shoes are organized, and my living room is even decorated for fall. Looking back, there's some things I would have done differently, and some things I did do that I suggest, so I'll be sharing them in the list below. Disclaimer: These are suggestions that would have helped me as an autistic person; other people might have different things that help them, and that's great.

Moving for Autistic Adults: Do's and Don'ts

1. Start looking for an apartment EARLY. Early means 2 months before you need to move. At the very least, start looking at what's available in your price range to start setting your expectations. What I ended up with was a little more expensive than I originally hoped, and I knew less about it than I would have liked. Starting early gives you time to adjust your expectations. I knew from the start that my house wasn't going to look like my parent's 5-bedroom, newly painted home, but seeing my friends’ apartments gave me some realistic expectations for what I could probably look forward to on a student budget.

2. Tour the house in-person before you move. I'm a big planner, so not being able to plan where I could put my bed or my desk in my room was a little stressful, especially since I didn't know if my room was upstairs or in the basement. However, I was able to google fast food near my house, the closest grocery store, and the street view of my house, so I had a pretty good idea of what life would look like there, even if I didn't know everything.

3. Pack gradually. When I was getting ready to move, I started packing a few boxes a day starting about two weeks before I moved. We had a guest room, so when I packed a box, I would put it in there so the clutter was out of sight. I packed the stuff in my closet first so that my routine wasn't thrown off too much by my bedroom looking too different. This helped me feel prepared for the move, and also meant that I wasn't living out of a suitcase for the month before I moved out.

4. Have plans for potential sources of anxiety. For me, not knowing what I am eating or where I am sleeping can be big sources of anxiety when I’m traveling. For this move, I knew that my bed would be packed away the night before moving, so instead of being worried about where I would sleep, I put the guest bed in my bedroom a few days before that, so I wouldn't have to worry about doing that after packing everything else. Similarly, my family has always had the tradition of having pizza on moving day, which is what we did. I like this tradition because it's predictable, which is especially important when everything else is changing.

5. Set up the necessities as soon as possible. There's nothing more irritating than needing to use the bathroom during a move and being unable to find the toilet paper, soap, or a hand towel. I had a box marked "important, keep in car" with these things inside it, so that I wouldn't run into this issue. Similarly, I tried to have my bedroom set up the way I wanted it within the first few days, before I got to everything else.

6. Take breaks. After a week of busy moving, my family spent a day at a local pool, and I spent a long time in the lazy river. Finding a way to recharge is extremely important, but this can look different for everyone. Spending some time listening to music with a pet or taking a well-deserved nap can make the moving process much more enjoyable than it would be in the long run. Especially if you notice that you're hitting your limit, taking a break can be vital. There are also different kinds of breaks. Taking a break from putting up wall-hangings to organize a DVD collection or rediscover your stash of stuffed animals can be a nice way to get things done while also letting yourself rest mentally and physically from more demanding tasks.

7. Find all the help you can get. Moving really is a community activity. With one person, it's impossible to move a bed upstairs. With a good group of people, you can get so much more done than you could do alone.

8. Prepare for moving expenses and adjustments. Moving is expensive, and so is transportation. My family reserved our U-Haul a month in advance, which really came in handy. Unfortunately, they reserved the smallest one that could possibly work, and in the end, there were a few things I had to leave behind. I didn't mentally prepare myself for this very well, so that was a little anxiety-producing, but in the end, I was able to take everything important, even if that meant I had to unpack a few boxes and stuff their contents into my desk for the drive.

9. Make lists. Months before I had to move, I had started making lists of things I would want in my new home, whether that was a list for cleaning supplies, a list of meals to make, or a list of kitchen utensils I didn't have yet. For cleaning supplies, I just looked around my family's house and took note of things I needed, whether that was laundry detergent, matches, or a mop. When planning meals now, I love the fact that I already have a list of ideas.

10. Mentally prepare for plans to change. If I go into something with the expectation that everything will go as planned, I get thrown off by surprises and my overall experience is pretty negative. If I prepare for stuff to not go as planned, though, I can better manage my mental energy and will likely have thought up alternative plans for these circumstances. Expect the unexpected, basically.

For this move, expecting the unexpected meant that I wasn't completely thrown off by the bee’s nests, the spiderwebs, or the fact that my second bedroom was upstairs instead of downstairs. It meant that when we stayed in a hotel on the first day of the move instead of my new house, I was prepared, because I had an overnight bag packed just in case.

This doesn't mean that I experienced zero anxiety whatsoever; the actual lead-up to the move was a crazy few weeks, and even getting here involved a few challenges, but focusing on the predictable while planning for the unpredictable really helped my overall experience.

11. Enjoy the benefits of moving out. When I lived at home, I used to have to take showers earlier in the day, and if I forgot, I would have to wait until the next day because I would worry about waking someone up. Now I can take showers at 1 am if I really want to. I can cook the meals I like, and I never have to eat the meals I hate. I can spread out all my study materials in the living room and nobody gets annoyed by the mess but me. Moving out gave me a lot of freedom, and even though I miss home sometimes, the benefits far outweigh the downsides. When moving gets overwhelming, it helps to remember the end goal. You're moving for a reason, and there are things to look forward to.

12. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Not everyone can manage the challenge of living without support, and that's okay. Finding places that support you can be great alternatives that still allow some form of independence.

When my mom came to visit this weekend, she did my dishes, cleaned my bathroom, and made me a home-cooked meal. Dishes are something I can struggle with, so this meant a lot to me. For people with different support needs than me, there are programs with support people who can help do these things more often, and places like group homes are a great way to start the process if you need more support. Asking for help can also look like talking with your support system about your worries for moving, whether that be family, friends, or a therapist. Reasoning through concerns helped me a lot throughout this process, especially as an autistic person undergoing a lot of change in a very short amount of time.

11. Find connection. This was a really big one for me. Moving away from my support system was a pretty big source of anxiety for me. The idea of being lonely made me think of the months of isolation I had experienced during the last few years that culminated in an anxiety diagnosis and my eventual autism diagnosis. That time was really challenging for me, and I was worried about a repeat. Eventually, I did recognize that most of my past anxiety came from a lack of control more than loneliness, which helped. It also helped when my cousin came to visit three days after I moved, and when I went to church that Sunday and met some people I could relate to. Since moving, my parents have called almost every day, and it has helped to realize that my support system back home isn't gone, just farther away.

In conclusion, moving out isn't for everyone, and it isn't to be taken for granted. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into making my new house a home. But it's also worth it. I love my new house, my new cat, and the little teal pumpkin I got for my dining table. Knowing how your brain works is always the best policy when doing something new, and for me, accommodating for my own brain really helped with the overall experience. Hopefully, this helps some other people when moving, and if anyone else has moving hacks, feel free to share them below..