Packing

Well the movers come on Monday and I have been going along thinking that this was going to be SOO easy since I don't have to do any of the heavy lifting. Not so much.
I realized that since I am not going to be able to supervise every item at every moment (there will be 3-5 movers and from past experience, they split up) I have to PRE-organize everything so they don't pack things that need to stay.

Oh and then comes the tricky part of renting out our house. Our property manager wants us out so it will rent faster, but we can't pay rent in WA and pay our mortgage on an empty house. SO we are staying here with my SIL until it rents. Until it rents. I really hate not having control. So in my pre-packing, I have to separate the very basics that will fit in our car but sustain us for an unspecified period of time... are we going to be living out of suitcases for 3 weeks or 3 months??? The darn dog kennels take up nearly half of the back of the car, so we just half of the back of the minivan to fit very important papers, Gregory's medical records, clothes and school books. I have tried to minimize it as much as possible but how do I plan appropriately for an undefined time period?? Oh and don't forget an oxygen tank to get Gregory through the high elevations of our trip... Is it wrong to strap a kid or a dog to the roof??? Maybe the husband???

So this is what my piles break down to:

• Stays with the house

(Lawn mower, light bulbs, paint, spare parts)

• Stays with us

(papers, clothes, dogs, oxygen, school books, kids)

• Goes to SIL's house

(Food, cleaning products, chemicals that can't be shipped)

The problem lies in where to put these piles. Mentally I know the order of all things, but how do I adequately separate or label these things for movers?


This is what still needs to be done:

• Pre-pack stuff that might "fall off the truck"

(tools, CD's, DVD's, electronics, jewlery, etc)

• Take down stuff like artwork, curtains, charts and visual aids in school room
• Schedule services to be turned off (on hold for hours, faxing copies of military orders to break contracts, having to explain our random living situation on why we can't transfer service to WA right away)
• Repaint wild colors of my rooms
• Clean house

This is on top of the regular tasks of kids, schooling, meals, dogs and my own college class and Greg gets to be blissfully un-involved in San Diego.

There is an upside though, the kids are getting old enough to actually be helpful. They are able pack simple things like DVD's. And the questions they ask about what is staying and going are funny. Hannah wants to know if our plants are going with us (we just did the landscaping in October). Gregory wants to know if we are taking the doors and the paint that is actually on the walls. He was quite mad that "Grandma's paint" (the marroon in the guest room) was staying!!

Mi Vida Loca!