packing up

Just a few weeks ago, we started sorting through “our life”, or in other words, all the crap we had collected over the years, to see what we could take to Chile. Shipping everything would be a very expensive endeavour, to ship a 20 ft container (about 7 x 2.5 x 2.5 m3) to Santiago would cost about 6 grand. Because most our large stuff was hand-me-down furniture, we decided to hand it down further to our friends and other interested people, while we would ship our more personal small stuff, books, kitchen stuff, a drum kit and clothes in a crate by sea (weight no real issue, and quite affordable). We will use our savings to buy new stuff, nice, almost 40 and finally buying some new furniture!!

figure 1, 2

It was still quite some work and difficult to figure out how to pack it all in the crate, and my tetris skills came in handy. It is a fact that drummers are good in tetris because they have to pack their drum kit in their car after every gig, true story! The crate wouldn’t fit through our door once assembled, so I did a test run indoors to see what would fit (Fig. 1, 2). The friday they would pick up the crate, I woke up super early to assemble the crate and started filling it. Lots of friends helped, and it took a few hours to finally have everything we thought we should fit in it (Fig. 3-5). Then we closed it which was kind of hard, the box with all sides up was a little deformed from the weight leaning against the walls, so eventually, we had to push the 4 sides, while one person stood on top of the crate to get the lid down on the spots where the metal closures could be attached… (sorry no pictures, all hands were on the crate by then).

figure 3,4

Once that was down, I got a call from the company that was going to pick it up that they couldn’t come, and tuesday would be the first possibility. Well at least it was closed, and no way it would open before we would have the crate in Santiago. It had to stand there in the rain on the parking lot for 4 days (Fig.6), but at least it was out of our minds what to pack.

 figure 5,6

When the guy picked it up on tuesday it was a fun experience, very midwest I guess. We chatted some time, about where we were going, about Wisconsin local beer, and about that the crate was a nice crate. Where did u get that? This is the way to ship stuff overseas, it looks very professional, ha! If you’re interested, I got the info here: AMID logistics, and the crate here. In the end we packed it up with the lift, all of a sudden I was worried that it might be too heavy or something, but it went in the truck w/o any trouble (Fig.7-12). I think the crate is somewhere in Florida now, it is supposed to get on a boat tomorrow or tuesday and then over the gulf of Mexico, through the Panama canal, over the pacific to Valparaiso. They should bring it to Santiago, I hope on the doorstep, because it is a big one.

figure 7-12

Once we had that down, we still had a house full of stuff (Fig.13 ), but a few days of serious packing and handing out stuff almost emptied the house (Fig.14). In the end we needed 7 suitcases, and also brought a box for my PC (Fig.15). Fortunately suitcases were on sale at TJ Maxx and we had to buy 3 extras, as well as borrow 3 more from Chilenos that had some empty suitcases lying around from their visitors bringing christmas presents and such. Last minute packing caused some confusion of where we left all our stuff, but as of now, we are clear on what is where. We are staying with Fran’s parents, but the next step is to bring it all to our new apartment in Santiago…. yes, we got one! More follows soon….

figure 13-15