Imagine suffering through a strained back, chronic nervous jitters and a newly developed insomnia condition from moving out of your apartment, and then realizing you have to go through it all over again six days later.

Before making the big decision to pack up and relocate this summer, double check all of your options and review your plans thoroughly.

I became victim to a horrible moving-out situation that I never saw coming and now wish I had evaluated all of my choices and plans before I turned in my keys.

For an entire semester, my friend and I had big ideas for renting a spacious, people-friendly house near school.

I have lived in an apartment for three years and felt that it was time I try taking the next step in growing up. Renting a house seemed like a step forward in the right direction. So, the planning began, months in advance.

My friend and I quickly began running over different choices in locations and the range of rent we were willing to afford. We decided to move during the first two weeks of April so that our Midterms would not stress us out during the move.

After a few weeks of driving up and down streets and calling numbers that we took from rental signs, we found the perfect place 8211; a duplex unit, upstairs, with 1,700-square feet of space, large rooms and walk-in closets all nestled amongst hundreds of lush, green trees down 33rd Street in Midtown.

It seemed too good to be true and it didn&t take very long to find out that it was.

After the first night of moving in our desks, beds and dressers, we realized there was a problem.

Two firemen had moved into the unit below ours the week before. These firemen weren&t just any firemen, either. They had to be up at 4 a.m. every day as they were heavily involved in the Fire Academy, which they planned to graduate from this year.

Their early-bird problem quickly became our problem.

At 9:30 p.m., we received our first knock on the door. The men, needing to be up at unreasonable hours, were asking us to keep the &racket& down. How do you prevent a dresser sliding across a floor from waking up the people below you when they hear every small noise?

The next two days we were lucky enough to have the knocking stop, but then we quickly found out that the men had taken it upon themselves to call the owner to complain about &noise and foot traffic& after 8 p.m.

Once again, questions began running through our minds like: Was it the toilet flushing that created the noise or the nightly news we watched on television yesterday?

The final straw came when the owner suddenly walked through the door without any notice at all to announce that he had heard too many complaints and wanted a meeting to be called to solve the situation.

Our rental agreement, which for once I had read thoroughly page for page, explicitly said that the owner had to announce his arrival 24 hours in advance and that &no loud booming noise& should be heard after 8 p.m. Nowhere in the agreement did it say that the tenants couldn&t make any noise whatsoever after 8 p.m.

In addition to these breaches of our contract, the owner began piling on more requests for us to adhere to, after everything had already been signed. Tedious requests like: slippers and socks should only be worn when walking inside the house, 80 percent of the rooms should be covered with carpets that we were expected to buy and that we should mark the places on the wall where we want to hang things so that the owner could come by and screw them in so as to not &upset& the walls.

After much exasperation and despair over our situation, we came to the much-hesitated agreement to leave. All of this happened over the span of four days. The remainder of the month was spent looking for an affordable, noise-friendly place to live.

Two roommates whom my friend and I planned to move out with into another house decided they would not be able to afford the rent.

They dropped out of the plans the day before the move. At the same time, I found myself juggling major exams, research papers, debates, part-time work and work at the school newspaper.

Finally, my friend and I had a break-through. The two of us found people and a noise-tolerable town home 10 blocks away, downtown and moved our belongings out of the temporary house.

Looking back on the chaotic events, I realize that moving out takes a lot of work and requires a high degree of wariness.

It&s important to question every line on the rental agreement that you are unsure about. My friend and I have just received our deposits back from the temporary house in Midtown and sorted out all of the checks that have been written between rental deposits, monthly rent, connecting and disconnecting cable, Internet and phone lines that have been associated with the &double move.&

Now I don&t plan to move for a really long time, but when I do, I&ll be sure to double, triple and quadruple check my plans and rental agreements before I make the big transformation.