Now that we’re mostly settled into our new home, I wanted to share about the official moving experience we had about three weeks ago. For those of you who have talked to us, you might have known that we lived in our lovely little new rental home for a solid three and a half weeks without our “stuff.” As with any move, there were lots of logistics to be sorted, and we had decided not to wait around in Nashville until the movers could come. Why sit around when we could get down here and Dave could start work? Our philosophy was simple: we’ve now lived three years with all our stuff in boxes… why not a few more weeks?
Though the wait was longer than we expected, the big day finally arrived when the United moving truck pulled up outside our home in Montgomery. As I sat waiting for the movers that morning, I felt the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning. Because our stuff had stayed in storage (in Dave’s parents’ attic!) while we were in Nashville, we weren’t even sure just how big of a load it would be. We had a rough idea, but we knew this truck would be full of surprises for us.
Our stuff didn’t even come close to filling up this huge truck…
As the movers began unloading, I had some of the responses we had talked about being possible. First of all, I remembered getting rid of a TON of stuff before we moved out of our home in Auburn. We had a yard sale and countless trips to the thrift store to whittle down to the bare necessities. We knew we didn’t want to store too much stuff for two plus years, and we knew the details of our return were unknown… so the less to deal with at that point, the better. But as the movers unloaded the truck that day, I couldn’t help but be surprised as they continued to bring in box after box. The piles seemed huge! I could NOT believe we had saved that much stuff! I even asked the guy (as we were running out of places to pile boxes in our cozy house), “So… is that almost all of them?” His response? “I think that might be a little more than half.” Oh no! I had to start getting creative in telling them places to put the boxes, only hoping that when we unpacked the contents, they would belong in a spot nearby.
The kitchen pile…
One of the “random” piles…
With all the boxes unloaded, the only thing left to do was actually unpack the boxes. But of course, we waited until that Friday when Dave was off work to tackle that endeavor. Plus, because I knew there would be so many “surprises” inside the boxes, I didn’t really want to take the fun of opening them up without Dave’s participation.
We started with the kitchen… where we had the most boxes and where we knew all the contents would go in one room. Plus, I was eager to have real dishes to eat on, a full pots and pans set to cook with, and all the fun appliances and kitchen toys I knew we had but had forgotten about. It really was like Christmas in July, or like getting married all over again, opening all those boxes, being surprised and excited by the contents.
Dave–starting on the first box. What will we find inside?
Just for fun… some of the things we had forgotten about:
The George Foreman grill
Serving dishes that match our everyday china
Fun wooden salad bowl set
Grilling utensil set
Cookie cutter set (of 100! wow!)
Glass cake holder/stand
Loads of work that day… but LOTS of fun!
So you can imagine it was quite fun to “rediscover” these items (and more!) in our boxes. I was found great consolation in realizing just how much of the boxes were filled with paper and packing material rather than goods! We really hadn’t saved as much as the boxes made it look like. In fact, it’s just about right for the size of our home.
I was also at times impressed with how much thought and intention we had put into the packing process three years ago. For example, I’ve been thinking we needed to scrounge up some hangers because we only had as many as the clothes we brought from Nashville. But alas, then I saw the “laundry supplies” box, which had four bundles of good hangers stored along with our iron and ironing board cover.
And you might be wondering… how did your stuff hold up after two moves and three years in storage? Well, altogether, we’d say great! We only discovered one casualty:
This pretty iced tea glass didn’t survive.
But hey… if that’s all that got broken/damaged/destroyed… well, I’d say we’re doing alright! So we now have a set of 11 instead of 12, which is just not that big of a deal. We figured it was a net gain, you know, with the experience of traveling the world versus the broken glass!
Also, a few other surprises came as we discovered things we did save… and wondered WHY. So even though we had downsized before departure, we managed to max out two more good-sized boxes to take to our local Goodwill thrift store. It’s amazing how three years can really help you detach from some of this stuff!
Funny enough, even after this picture, we ended up adding more to the pile, then taking an additional trip later.
We’ll have to do another post soon about our new home and how we have found places for (most of) our things and still have space to put up a crib in a few months. And as much as we love having unpacked our boxes, we wouldn’t trade our two years on the road for this stuff in a heartbeat. Yes, it’s fun to have, and yes, I’m enjoying the luxuries of a full kitchen, but we’d leave it all behind again for that tent and one-burner stove. The stuff is nice, but it’s the experiences along the way that make our lives so rich and meaningful! So remember that today… it’s just stuff! Enjoy the people, the travel, the memories, the relationships… that’s what really matters.
