Tuesday, April 28, 2015

You Can't Take It With You


By now you probably know that we are moving to the US this summer. It sounds so far away, yet when you look at the calendar, you'll see that it's really about 9 weeks away. 9 WEEKS. Oh hells yes, I'm excited. I cannot wait to see my family and friends and enjoy all the things I've missed about America and to share it all with my husband and daughters.

But it comes with a big price, and we're not talking airfare here (which, as you may have guessed, is not cheap). We're talking about our things and how to get them to the US.

Originally, Jeremy and I had discussed shipping our favorite books, winter clothes and the children's toys through the mail. But when we recently sent gifts to my family, it became quite clear that if we had to ship a heavy box of books, the cost would be astronomical. Jeremy said we should just get rid of most of our stuff and start fresh. I know it makes the most sense. Especially since we sent 2 giant boxes of our stuff from Korea over here to China when we first moved. And what we found was that we really didn't use the stuff we sent. Well, my husband didn't. I'd shipped over my books. But shipping to China from Korea is MUCH cheaper than shipping from China to America. Plus, when we moved to China, we knew we were staying in one place for a bit. When we get to the US, we'll be staying with my parents for a short while until we get situated and get our own place. Which means if we move out of Florida, we'll need to ship whatever we've shipped from China again. And that, my friends, was the tipping point for me. Jeremy is 100% right. We can't take it with us.

We're still deciding on flights but we know we can have 6 checked bags and each bag has a weight limit of 23 kg. And so we must now decide what is important enough to go with us. And for what isn't, we must decide to sell, give away or throw away. This is not going to be easy.

This is going to be so hard! My books! My precious fucking books! Gah! My shoes! Oh my GOD! My shoes! Help! How do I choose? Clothes are easy. In 2 weeks, if I can't get into it, out it goes. Jeremy's made that decision easier by promising a shopping excursion when we get to the US. That's a good bonus. But still. My handbags. My Gucci! My Coach! Oh no no no. Those are coming with me.

2 comments:

  1. It is really hard to decide what to take with when moving. We sold/ gave away nearly all of our furniture when we moved to Germany. However as we were able to go by cars we were able to take nearly all of our other stuff with us!
    I know few people who used a container to get everything from China to Europe when they moved there...

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    1. My work BFF just moved with his family this week after getting his wife's green card. They lived here in Qingdao for about 11 years so they used a shipping container because they wanted to take all their furniture. They even shipped their piano! But we don't want to take this crusty old furniture. Our sofa is falling apart. This bed sucks ass. And even if we were in love with all of our furnishings, we will be staying with my folks when we get there so we would have to store whatever we sent and then ship it/move it somewhere else again. I know it's for the best to get rid of much of this stuff but it's still hard. Raelynn will be very upset about her toys until I take her to Toys R'Us in the states and buy her new stuff. I promised her an Easy Bake Oven, but that's kind of for me too. Shhh, don't tell! LOL!

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