This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1399.
Moving out?
De-stress your move with these native English vocabulary terms.
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With your American hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl.
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USA.
Today we get a listener question from Keisuke, who is moving out of his apartment in Connecticut, USA.
In this super practical episode, get all of the vocabulary you need to survive this stressful time in life.
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Hey, Lindsay, how's it going?
Hey, Michelle, it's going pretty great.
How are you?
What's going on?
I am good.
I am good.
Yeah, not too much over here.
I just can't believe it's already gonna be the middle of the summer.
But yeah, everything's good.
So when did you move to Denver?
When is the last time?
Yeah, you moved.
Yeah, the last time I moved out of an apartment was about a year ago, early July of last year.
And yeah, that is such an intense process, isn't it, Michelle?
Yeah, to move out of somewhere.
Oh my gosh, it's so stressful.
I last moved about three years ago from one apartment to another.
And yeah, I feel like moving out is just everybody dreads it.
That's why people like generally tend to not do it too frequently after a certain point in life.
Yeah, yeah, true.
I mean, I try to move as little as I possibly can.
Especially in the same city.
Unless I just have to get out of my apartment.
I will stay in the same apartment for years just because it's so expensive and annoying.
But the good thing about it is that you do end up throwing away a lot of things.
And kind of cleaning things up, organizing, which I think is good.
That feels good.
Yeah, that definitely does.
So yeah, today we actually have a listener question.
And you know this listener, Lindsay, from our website, Wizard Club.
Yeah, this question is from Case Gay, who's based in Connecticut.
He may be back in Japan by now, but he has is a part of the website Wizard Club.
And I've met with him a few times this spring to help us redesign the website.
So shout out to everyone who is in that club who has met with me.
Thank you, guys.
Your insight has been so valuable.
And the website should be finished soon.
We'll let you know when it's all done.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
So thank you for that question.
Before we get into it guys, we want to remind you definitely make sure.
If you are not following us on Instagram, you are totally missing out.
I actually, I can't even tell you how much I love the Instagram channel.
It's cool.
It is just...
It's just so unique and it's just all of us on there just having a fun time showing our lives, teaching stuff and also announcing important things.
So if you're not over there, it's this really great community where everybody is – chatting back and forth.
And it's just so much fun.
So guys, make sure you go to Instagram and follow All Ears English.
Look for the yellow and that's where we are.
Absolutely.
We'll see you guys over there.
Looking forward to that.
Awesome.
So let's get into KSK's question here.
Yes.
Yes.
So should I read it or?
Let's do it.
Yeah, sure.
Okay, here we go.
So he says, Hi, Lindsay, Michelle and Jessica.
I'm KSK in Connecticut, USA.
But I will have to go back to Japan next April.
So he may be talking about he may already be back in Japan.
Yeah, perhaps.
Yeah.
I did not understand the meaning of the word vacate at first, but I looked it up and then realized it means to leave.
As I had tons of trouble when I moved in, I'm expecting that I will be in trouble a lot this time too.
Can you share some words that are often used when you move out?
I would be happy if you share some cultural stuff related to moving in and out too.
Thank you very much, Keisuke.
Yeah.
Okay.
This is going to be fun.
Yeah, this is great because KSK is immersed in American culture, living there in Connecticut.
So this is real life English right here.
Fantastic.
Yeah, this is a great question.
And you know, yeah, Keisuke, you're right.
The notice to vacate is when you will be out of the apartment.
So yeah, vacate is leave.
It's a fancy way to say leave.
And it's used a lot in, you know, moving, like with space.
So today we are going to focus more on moving out and some general ideas about moving.
I mean, really we could do a whole series about moving in the US and moving in, moving out, how to contact different people, because it's definitely a little bit stressful.
But guys, we're going to start talking about it today.
We're going to give you some key words and it's going to be good.
So let's get into it, Lindsay.
All right.
Yeah.
So what is the first thing we want to get across to our listeners here and anyone else who's going through this situation?
Yeah.
Right.
So well, guys, again, moving can be stressful.
There's no way around it.
But with moving out, what you want to do is you want to do everything you possibly can to get your security deposit back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What is a security deposit?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So this is something that you pay.
It's usually one month's rent that you would pay when you first move in, that your landlord holds in case there's any damage to the apartment.
Okay.
So you want to make sure that you clean things up, cover any holes.
We'll talk about that in a bit.
If you've made any damage, you want to fix that problem.
Otherwise, you'll lose your security deposit.
Right, right, right, right.
Exactly.
So I remember moving out of an apartment, not my last one, but the one before.
And it was so stressful, like, oh, you want to get the whole thing back.
But sometimes you feel like you're getting scammed or that they're going to find things that just aren't really an issue.
There's not much authenticity or transparency in that whole process.
They just decide how much they're going to give you back.
It's kind of sketchy, actually.
It is.
It is.
So, I mean, one thing you can do is you can talk to your landlord and review your lease, right?
Lease is the agreement.
And try to find out more information as to what may be expected.
So maybe beforehand you can contact them and say like...
You know, what can I do to try and make sure that I get my full security deposit back?
Maybe there's something on the lease.
So I think that that could be a good idea if you want to get a heads up on what to do.
Because this can be a lot of money.
A one month rent could be what you need to put towards your next security deposit somewhere else.
So you do want to be smart about that.
I like that suggestion.
Reach out to the landlord.
Have a chat about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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So what else, Lindsay?
What do you want to do when you're moving?
So it's a good idea to do a deep clean, whether you do it yourself or you hire a cleaning service.
I love that idea, especially just the ick factor, right?
I mean someone new coming into your.
When we moved into this apartment here in Denver, I could tell it had not been deep cleaned.
And I got annoyed and mad at the landlord.
I didn't say anything to him, but I should have because it could have been.
It should have been deep cleaned.
It wasn't like there's dirt in the cracks of the shower, things like that.
Oh, I did not like that.
Well, and you're talking about deep clean here.
So deep clean is kind of.
I mean, you could also just say clean, but deep clean gives the sense of like you are going in getting all that dirt, that gross stuff.
That's that deep clean.
So that's a new, that's a new term.
Yeah, that's a good term.
And that's different from kind of a weekly clean, right?
Just a maintenance clean.
This is like, like you said Michelle, I like that you're scrubbing.
You're getting down on your hands and knees into the cracks and crevices.
Okay.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
And yeah.
You also might need to spackle holes that are in the walls.
Lindsay, did you do any spackling?
And what in the world is spackling?
Yeah, I've done some spackling in my life over the years.
In my different apartment.
So the idea here, guys, is if you put holes in the walls, you need to fill that in with something.
So there's a special product.
I think it is called spackle.
Or maybe that's just the verb to spackle.
Maybe the product is called something else.
I'm actually not sure.
But it would fill the hole so that if they were to repaint they wouldn't see that there had been holes in the wall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's the spackle, guys.
Yeah.
And, you know, normal wear and tear is generally, I feel, understandable.
But again, that's something that should be checked before moving in, right?
Like even when you move in, you should be taking pictures of things.
But in my experience, like they generally understand if there's some normal wear and tear.
But you never know.
So like I said, you definitely want to check with your landlord, but guys, normal wear and tear.
What is that phrase?
That's a great phrase too.
And you see this when you sell a house or you sell a car, I think sales of certain things.
It's just the normal kind of beating that an object would take.
I mean, I think normal wear and tear is that spackling being done or just holes in the wall.
Most landlords are okay.
I had a landlord in Boston that didn't want us to put holes in the wall at all.
But that's kind of rare.
It's sort of normal.
That's normal wear and tear.
Having a huge hole in the wall would not be normal wear and tear.
Right.
Right, right, right.
Exactly.
That's a good example.
So, yeah, but that's a really good phrase.
Normal wear and tear.
And then, you know, you want to leave the space.
I think that you always have to think of it like this.
You want to leave the space in the same way. that it was when you moved in, right?
As close as possible, aside from maybe some normal wear and tear.
So you know, like I mean Lindsay, as you were just talking about would you want to move into this apartment?
Sounds like you had a bad experience with that.
No.
Kind of.
It just could have been done better.
I was annoyed.
And honestly, I feel like landlords should pay to have a deep clean done professionally, even if we, it's good for the individual tenants to do it too.
But after that, they should have a deep cleaned.
I think I think especially if it's been more than a year that the persons live there.
Yeah, I think so, too.
I think so, too.
You know, there's generally some sort of final walkthrough before you leave.
So that's where kind of the landlord might come in.
And that's that's kind of that's go time.
I mean...
Go time.
That's where, you know, they come in and they're like kind of evaluating.
They go through all the rooms with you.
And you know you might at that point hear a little bit about you know their relationship uh, the security deposit situation.
I don't know if they would tell you then or if they would fill something out or um, but yeah, that that final walkthrough was a little bit intimidating.
It can be yeah, because you just never know what they're gonna find.
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
And then of course you want to find out if there are specific moving days or times, because sometimes i can Be different depending on the building.
If there's an elevator right.
That can sometimes be very frustrating.
Oh, and if you live in a crowded East Coast city like New York or Boston.
I know in Cambridge we had to arrange to reserve part of the sidewalk, part of the street, reserve a parking spot for our moving van to come in because we had hired movers.
Hmm.
And then you have to get a permit for that with your city.
So check with it right with these bigger, more dense cities.
I know we have listeners living in places like Cambridge Massachusetts, Boston.
You actually have to apply with the city to block off a space.
So the moving van has a place to park.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Definitely.
And then the last thing is, guys, when you move, I would consider getting mail redirection.
That's when you tell you know you're in, you fill something out saying that you've moved and you know the post office knows where to find you.
Yeah, yeah.
That's a good idea, too, for sure.
So, gosh, moving.
It kind of makes me nostalgic a little bit, but it also makes me cringe, to be honest.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That moment when you're about to leave a place that you've lived in for several years and you do get this moment where you just look around the room, you look around the apartment and you walk through it and you're like, oh my God, all these memories that you've made.
Yeah, i know michelle, you're kind of a nostalgic person.
I'm a very i'm the most, i'm the nostalgic person in the world.
I am the yeah, i am too a little.
I think you're probably more than i am, but i definitely have had multiple experiences where yeah you, the last time you're closing that door and you feel like you're closing a chapter of your life.
It's very symbolic in a sense.
Yeah oh, my gosh.
No, i'm the worst guys, you have no idea.
Um, So excellent.
So we want to, before we go, give a couple of little phrases that you could use when speaking to really your landlord.
I suppose it would be.
So one thing you could say is, when will I find out if I will receive my security deposit?
Or just when will I receive my security deposit?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that.
It's direct.
That's good.
And then another question you could ask, is normal wear and tear okay?
And I think ideally we would ask this at the very beginning before we even move in, right?
But we can't always do everything perfectly.
So...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you could say, when is the final walkthrough, you know, kind of scheduling that.
So those are some things that you could ask.
Yeah, I like that.
All right.
So what were the key terms that we want to review today for our listeners that KSK is going to take home here?
Yeah.
OK, well, vacate was the one that he brought to us.
So thank you for that.
We also had security deposit and lease.
What else, Lindsay?
Deep clean.
So that's as opposed to like a weekly maintenance clean, a deep clean.
Really good phrase, guys.
Spackle.
I don't think that's been anywhere in your textbooks, in your classes.
I don't think so.
Really good one to know.
Very useful English.
Normal wear and tear.
Super common phrase.
Final walkthrough and mail redirection.
Redirect your mail with the post office.
Great.
Very practical episode, Michelle, today.
What's the takeaway?
Well guys, you know moving can be very stressful and we can do follow-ups and vocab for moving materials moving in.
There's just so many things that we can do with this, actually.
Yeah.
But we've covered some of the bases today for moving out.
And let us know, what is it like in your country?
Is it kind of a similar process?
Is moving also just as stressful as it is here?
But try and stay calm when moving and be sure to also stand up for yourself if you feel that something isn't right.
Yeah, exactly.
I agree.
Good one, Michelle.
And don't forget guys, go over to Instagram, follow our channel, join our community over there, follow us comment, watch our videos.
They're very natural.
So you're going to learn real natural English in our everyday lives over there.
Definitely.
Okay, cool.
Okay, well, this has been fun.
Thanks for that question.
And yeah, let's, I don't think either of us are moving anytime soon.
So that's cool.
Exactly.
No, I'm not planning on it.
So I'm happy.
Staying put.
I'll talk to you soon.
Have a good one.
All right.
Bye.
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