Crating Madness

I shared a little bit about our last minute decision to crate. Let's just say, it's resulted in all sorts of madness. Literally, every time we would go to the store and think we were done, something else would come to mind and we'd start a new list. Needless to say, it's been a very expensive month and while we don't feel like we've been excessive, we still can't believe how much money we've spent. Then, we remind ourselves that we don't normally buy 18 months of Zyrtec at one time or $200 in rechargeable batteries. Nor do we normally try to stock up on a wide range of Christmas and birthday gifts all in one trip to Walmart. Not to mention, 3 years worth of socks and underwear for 5 children in one stop- that can add up quickly. Surely, we will have less expenditures in the years ahead because we've made so many advanced purchases.

Because of our family size, we were allowed a pretty large crate. Our company allows a set amount per couple and then adds on a smaller amount for each child. Then, if a family can't or doesn't elect to crate, the unused portion is paid to them as a $ per square foot amount. This money is then used to purchase items that can't be crated. Since we had sold most everything, our strategy was to crate only what would be unavailable or very expensive in our host country. It didn't make sense to purchase things here that would take up our crating allowance if we could just purchase them there. Our goal was to use about 1/2 of our crating allowance- leaving the other half available in cash.

Our country has proved to be a bit challenging with shipments the last few years, which is why we initially were told no on a crate. However, our company has decided to ship our things via ocean freight, which they haven't tried for a while. The containers that the moving company has successfully gotten in recently are these pre-fabed boxes called "lift vans", which are 207 cubic feet each. Our initial goal was to use only 2 of those boxes, but in the end, we decided we'd be happy if it all fit into 3. This allowed about 1/3 of our cubic allowance to go unused, for later purchases.

We spent three weeks shopping, packing, and sorting. Unlike the old days, where folks could pack their crates at home and stuff things in every nook and cranny, all of our stuff had to be packed in a box, or at least wrapped in packing paper. We packed much of what we had ahead of time and the contents of any one box were totally random. It might start out as a box of toys, but we filled in every nook and cranny with little items. So, one box might have a Playmobil pyramid, a 6 pack of socks, 2 tubes of Neosporin, 2 bottles of flintstone vitamins, a pair of children's shoes, 72 pencils, 20 packs of jello (removed from the boxes), and 15 cheese packets that we'd pulled from the blue box mac and cheese- after we'd dumped the noodles out. CrAzY! Needless to say, Ryan and I had to throw our administrative/label maker tendencies out the window and remind ourselves that the goal was simply to get it there.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of our day yesterday, when the men actually came to take our stuff away. It was terribly hot, like 107 degrees. They were kind and polite, but they weren't fully on board with the "get as much as you can get in there" mentality that we'd developed. However, they responded well with our help and lots of cheerleading. Before we started loading the 3rd crate, the man in charge told me that it was time for me to make some decisions about which of the remaining items I would be willing to leave behind. Ryan explained to him very politely that he was confident it would all fit- we weren't leaving any of them. He reluctantly agreed to try. Ryan had to actually get on the truck and explain to the men that we were going to rearrange the sofa and loveseat because they had left too much open space behind them. They decided to try his idea and voila! Anyway, when it was all said and done, we got all the items on and had a few holes to spare. I thought the men were going to club me as I grabbed a dollhouse, a shopping bag full of hangers, and 2 dozen paper towels and began wrapping them in brown paper. We did it all politely, with lots of "thank yous," "bravos," and "yes sirs," but the bottom line was, I refused to send that much air to Africa!

The piling begins

Ready to be loaded into the lift vans

This is Ryan and Abby, encouraging the men to find a hole for this "little box."

Nailing on the final door! We were in celebration mode at this point!

In the end, we parted as friends. One of the men commented that all of that stuff fitting was about like Moses parting the Red Sea. Heaven knows, the prayers were going up during that last 30 minutes! We are thankful that it's done and now we pray that it all gets there safely and without a hitch and that we find favor with the fine folks in customs once it reaches our host country.

Goodbye Gary, Ed, John, and Brian. Thanks for a memorable afternoon! Now, go drink some Gatorade!