I wrote this during the week of March 16th – March 24th. I waited to post it until we arrived at post because there were too many other things to do and I didn’t want to spend the time editing and uploading pictures. Here it is:
We hit the ground running the day we returned from Washington State. We made several trips to Costco, Target and our friend’s house where we were storing all the things we bought that don’t fit in our small house. We spent over $3,000 at Costco the past 2 months preparing for our move. Saturday the whole family came down with food poisoning and we were all in bed all day. I’ve never felt so terrible in my life. I’ve also never slept so long. What a waste of a day.
After doing our shopping we spent the rest of the week until pack out sorting through all the tubs in our cellar and everything in our house. We put everything into six different categories: storage, UAB (Unaccompanied Air Baggage that should arrive a few weeks after we do), HHE (Household Effects which will arrive at post with in three months of us arriving), on the plane (6 suitcases, 3 carry-ons and 3 personal items), liquids; which all needed to be put into tubs, and all of our glassware which needed to be put together in one space in the house. Here is what we did. We emptied one room and made that our UAB room, we made half the cellar into a storage area and we put all our suitcases and anything else we found along the way that we wanted to go with us on the porch, the tubs of liquid where in our dinning room and the glassware was in the corner of our kitchen and everything else was HHE. This system worked really well. Everything went to the correct destination and the movers didn’t ask us many questions through out the day because they knew which way everything was needed to be shipped. Well, they did pack one pile of things that we needed, which included our check book… but we’ll figure that out soon.
The movers arrived Thursday morning. There were five of them to begin the day. By the end there were nine. The man who estimated our weight and the amount of boxes and crates they needed way underestimated. So they needed to have more men and women come with more boxes and an extra crate just to finish our little house. I’m not sure how we had so much and I think they were very surprised as well. We did buy a lot from IKEA and Costco but the estimator knew about all of the extra purchases. It took eight hours and all those people but when the pack out was finished we were very happy with how hard they all worked and what a great job they did packing.
That night we checked into our hotel in Ballston and stayed there for the next four nights while we tied up loose ends and hung out with friends.
The whole process went really well. I don’t think it could have gone better. It was a huge help having Patrick’s mom there and my brother. We were very thankful to have them around to help so much!
Here are some pictures from the days leading up to pack out. I didn’t take any right after everything was organized before the guys came or during or after.. oops. Too much else to worry about. So these pictures are a bit unorganized but you can see a little bit of what was going on. I’ll have to update you once our HHE and UAB arrive here in Yaounde so I can be sure they actually did a good job. : )
A Diplomat's Wife 