Pre Packout Panic Disorder

What my house looks like to me, pre-packout…

In a little over a month, I will be knee deep in my 7th packout for an international move (does not include all the little airfreight packouts from trainings or homeleaves). You would think that by this time it has all become routine, no big deal, easy-peasy… HA!

No matter how many times you do this, it’s always stressful.  Countries have different rules (hello NZ with your paranoia of all things wooden – don’t even LOOK at a pinecone while packing out your Christmas stuff).  The regs with your home organization change with each new administration. The circumstances in your own family change (you add kids, subtract kids – or pets).  If I wasn’t so mindful of the calories (or the fact that I gotta drive to soccer games and barbershop singing rehearsals for Meg), I’d be polishing off those last bottles of wine and rum about now.

What my lovely, generous friends tell me my house looks like – they are all drunk.

For awhile, I’ve been “organizing” our stuff.  I haven’t got to the point of piling stuff into the different shipping piles yet, but that is coming soon.  Right now I’m trying to isolate into their own cabinets those things that need to stay in NZ (garage remotes, extra keys, lamps I’ve stashed in closets, etc).  On pack out day I’ll tape DO NOT PACK signs all over these cabinets and closets in the hopes that they will be heeded.  I’m also trying to weed out those things I need to get rid of.  I’ve got little piles of stuff all over the house and so far I feel a bit like the packrats from the old timey cartoons that spend hours carrying stuff back and forth between piles, but never actually organizing anything to the point of moving on!

Then there’s all the questions of how to send what where.  How much do we actually need to send in our airfreight?  Most of the time our HHE has arrived roughly the same time as the airfreight, AND we’ve been able to keep the welcome kit until the HHE arrives.  But will this be that time when it takes forever for our HHE to arrive and the new post demands the welcome kit back when the airfreight gets there?  And add the extra leg for stuff that needs to be sent to the house in Arkansas on a cost construct basis and the airfreight for the college student.

In the end we’ll get it all figured out.  Everything will get packed, and really as long as I make sure the passports and car keys don’t get packed, we should be fine.  We have survived this process over and over again – without drinking!  I still hate it…