Helpful How-To: Packing Your Life Away

For those of you who were able to follow our move via Facebook, you probably saw this picture...

And to be honest, I may have posted it here, too....

But since my brain is completely fried, we are going to revisit this moment.

Because (other than the fact that my kid is stinking ADORABLE in this pic) as fun as it {doesn't} sound, it was seriously complicated to pack our short term possessions, vs. long term possessions AND stage our house to sell (anyone wanna buy a house??).

And it takes a lot of planning to make it happen just so.

But I thought I would give you a run down of what we did....

In case you should ever run into a similar situation...

Step 1.  Decide what you can live without.

In our case, we left behind a house full of furniture and decorations that we won't be needing until (unless) we buy a new house here in Georgia.

Yep.  It was painful to leave behind some of our prized possessions....

(Can we say $15 Bombay mirror anyone???)

But we knew what we could live without, and we both made painful sacrifices to make the move happen.

Step 2.  Determine what you need sooner rather than later.

Because of the nature of our move, we had a Packrat (yes, we all remember my obsession, right?) delivered and our plan was to have it stored until we move into our someday (aka. Georgia) home.

That meant that the entire time we were packing, we had to pack with the mindset of, "Do we need this anytime in the next 6 months to year?"

Anything that was a NO went into the Packrat.  

Anything that was a YES had to fit in my car or Techy's car along with a dog, a baby, and as many diapers as possible.

It was tough, but we packed our china.

We packed our silver.

We packed Little Man's toys.

We packed my skinny clothes...I'm pregnant, remember?

We packed Techy's wires....

And we packed every bath towel we have ever owned.  (Stupid move, right?)

All in the Packrat.

Step 3.  Divide and Conquer.

Once it came time to pack the items going into my car, I realized that I needed to determine a real plan for dividing our stuff up, while ensuring I could still see out of my windows.

And my secret?

Credit

And for $2.78 each, it cost me less than the cost of 1 suitcase to buy 10 of them.

The upside is that at a glance I can see what each container holds.

And any that were unused could easily get tucked anywhere to be used later.

Like when I am doing laundry at the laundromat at 2 am any random Saturday night.

All in all, we made it from Delaware to Georgia without any mishaps.

And with a buttload of stuff in the back end of my car.

And I know exactly where everything is....

If you believe that, I also have some oceanfront property in Arizona for you....

But I know where the important stuff is.  

And that's all that really matters.