Student life away from home: what to do with the apartment, the furniture and the boxes

The short answer

In student life away from home, there are four decisions to make before every departure, in this order: what happens to the room (keep it, sublet it or leave it), what happens to the furniture, what goes in a box and what goes in the suitcase, and where the boxes live while you're away. The rest follows from there.

I made that list again every year, and every year it felt new. By now I recognize the exact moment it goes wrong: seven in the evening the day before, IKEA lamp in hand, no idea where to put it.

If you're off on Erasmus and want the practical page straight away, it's Erasmus storage in Milan. If you'd rather take the decisions one at a time, with their traps, read on: I've made most of these mistakes on your behalf.

Your apartment in Milan: keep it, sublet it, or leave it?

This is the most expensive decision, so naturally everybody leaves it until last, usually as a voice note to a flatmate at midnight. There are three routes and none of them is painless.

Keeping it means paying rent and bills for months on an empty room, the only flatmate who never leaves dishes in the sink and also never chips in. It makes sense with a good contract, a locked rent and certainty that you're coming back to that apartment.

Subletting needs the landlord's written consent, which in Milan comes about as often as a free seat on the yellow line at 8:30 a.m.. If you get it your costs are covered, but you answer for whoever lives there: choose them more carefully than you chose your current flatmates.

Leaving it is the cleanest option and the most tiring: notice, final months to pay, a room to empty now and a new apartment to find on return. It's a double move for half the saving, and it still wins surprisingly often.

Furniture and bulky things: sell, give away or store?

If the landlord furnished the room, you've won the lottery and can skip this section. If over the years you bought your own things (the desk, the shelf, the lamp, the classic student IKEA haul) you have to decide now, because none of it fits in a suitcase.

Selling works, but it takes time. Post the listings a month ahead and take the photos in daylight: at eleven at night with the flash, even a nearly new desk looks like an archaeological find. In the final days you'll accept embarrassing offers anyway just to clear the room, because the market knows your flight is Monday.

Giving it to the flatmate who's staying is the fastest route, and it makes you feel generous for about a month, until you re-buy everything in September. Storing it makes sense for anything you'd buy again identical: if you sell cheap and re-buy at full price, your generosity cost more than storage.

Bikes, fans and floor lamps follow the same rule: sell or store. Leaving them at a friend's is a big favor dressed up as a small one, and you pay for it on return, when you find the bike spent the winter on a balcony.

What goes in a box and what goes in the suitcase

The hold luggage allowance is what it is, and it's never enough: you find out when your bathroom scale and the airport scale disagree, and the airport one always wins. So the suitcase gets the minimum, a small wardrobe of things you look good in and not much else.

I ask myself one question: "will I need this in the next six months?". If no, box. If yes but I can buy it there for a few euros, box anyway. If yes and it doesn't exist there (the out-of-print book, the moka pot, the charger for that one specific device), suitcase.

The box usually ends up holding the Italian books you won't open, the wrong season's wardrobe, the kitchen kit, the keepsakes, and the cables nobody can identify and nobody throws away. The box of mystery cables is an institution of student life and will outlive us all.

For packing without turning the box into a volcano with a chair sticking out (that really happened, and it's how the page was born) there's our how to pack your boxes guide. The limit is 20 kg per box, because one person lifts it, and sometimes that person is me.

Where to keep the boxes while you're away

There are three real options. What counts more than the storage price is who handles the transport, the line everybody forgets to count and that then turns up as punctually as the bills.

Your parents' place is free, as long as you don't count the journey. If home is Sicily or Calabria and you study in Milan, «free» is an optimistic word: those boxes have to travel, and traveling costs.

A self storage unit gives you the space, and the transport is your problem. With no car that means renting a van, driving the ring road and working around the warehouse's opening hours. You only see the total afterwards, and it's always higher than the number in your head: the full comparison is in Smoves vs traditional self-storage.

With a door-to-door pickup service they come to your place in Milan and keep your things for as long as you need. That's what we do: the warehouse comes to you. When you're back, you book the redelivery to the address you give us. How the price is worked out is on pricing; for people leaving there's Erasmus storage in Milan.

Two things people leaving for months always ask. If you'll live somewhere else on return, your things don't have to come back to Milan: we ship in Italy or abroad on a quote, and you get the figure before deciding. And redelivery can be partial: if in February you need your thesis books and nothing else, write to us and we bring back just those. There's no button for it in your account; you ask with a message.

Documents and things you genuinely need abroad

Documents are the boring part, which is exactly why they get forgotten. You need a passport, even inside Europe (many student residences ask for one, and an ID card puts them in a bad mood), then the host university's acceptance letter, passport photos for travel passes and the library, and a doctor's note if you take medication regularly.

You also want the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), which in Italy is the back of your health card and gives you access to public healthcare across the EU. It costs nothing, and you always find out you don't have it on a Sunday, with a fever, in a country whose language you don't speak. The program rules and grants live on the official Erasmus+ Italy site.

Then there are the things nobody lists and everybody buys on day one. A plug adapter for where you're going: the UK has its own standard, and you learn this in front of a three-hole socket with your phone at 4%. A heavy hoodie even if you're heading somewhere warm, because planes and night trains are refrigerated like a butcher's counter. And one decent outfit for the important event that will turn up unannounced.

Plan your return before you leave

Before you go, decide where you're coming back to. Do you have next year's apartment? Who's in your room while you're away? Do you have a plan for the limbo days between landing and new keys, which always exist and which nobody plans for?

If you're leaving things in storage, book the redelivery as soon as you know your return date. In September everybody comes back at once, and whoever books first chooses from more dates. Whoever waits risks a weekend on somebody's sofa.

One last thing, then I'll let you go: photograph the empty room before you hand back the keys. It takes two seconds, and next time the deposit comes up you have an argument.