[sweetpea]

After a two-day estate sale, lots of ads on craigslist.org and several days of leaving stuff with "Free" signs in the front yard, I'm down to about 10 boxes of stuff -- after starting with a two-bedroom house filled to the rafters. I moved out of my rental house last Tuesday, finished one housesitting gig and have just started another. Phew!

Now to reduce my stash still 50% more...

Argh, this is so hard!

Laura

[David with a dream]

Sounds like your having some good christmas fun sweetpea :D make sure you don't get rid of the cases! :confused: Good luck with your plans.....David

[Avalon]

Thats some impressive "decluttering".

[veronica]

Only thing with decluttering to that extent is that you have to replace it all once you get here, and that can work out expensive.

[sweetpea]

An update - 3 days to go.

With luggage restrictions, I'm finding it's not the physical dimensions, but the weight that's a problem. This is a surprise. I'm at 71 lbs and 86 lbs respectively. Gotta get it to 70 and 70, then I'll start worrying about what to do with 140 lbs of stuff at the Christchurch airport!

[Hannah]

I would second Veronica's point about cost of replacement. We were horrified at prices of new AND second hand furniture when we got to New Plymouth. I guess it depends on who much the stuff is worth that you are bringing from home, but even if it has a low re-sale value it is still potentially costly to replace. We spotted a sorry looking gloss white painted bedside cabinet in a local furniture second hand shop, it cost $220 (about £90). Apparently stuff is much cheaper in bigger towns as there is more competition, but just the cost of second hand fridges here runs into several hundred dollars. i also think new furniture is hideously expensive. We intended to just sell our stuff if we came here, but this trip out here has shown us this would be uneconomical for us. we even joked we could sell it here and make a profit over and above our shipping costs!!!!!
However, when you read some postings on how shipping firms cock things up then it is quite tempting to come over with a few suitcases of stuff!!!! My OH is so attached to his humungous tool collection i suspect we will end up returning to UK and staying there simply because he can't part with it and doesn't trust the shipping companies not to nick it (note Paul and Linda' story for more on theiving removal companies!!!)

[veronica]

wouldn't think that many of the people who ship stuff lose it to thievery, theres hundreds of people whos stuff comes over fine so they don't comment on it, after all whats to say, but people will comment when something goes wrong so you end up with a distorted view.

[Hannah]

Try telling my other half that!!!!!

[veronica]

As per instructions.....Oi other half... read my post. did it work

[sweetpea]

I would second Veronica's point about cost of replacement.

I totally understand the cost-of-replacement argument. I think my situation is a bit odd, since I'll be moving in with roommates (student life at 30-scary, eh?), it didn't make sense to ship my furniture, etc.

I ended up taking 3 70-lb boxes and a 40-lb carryon. They only charged me $80 excess baggage from San Francisco-Christchurch - quite a bargain!
:raebanana

I'm shipping 3 more boxes of stuff (130 lbs in all) and that's coming to $225 using the US postal service.

Now that I've had a chance to peruse Kmart's and The Warehouse's fine offerings :p , I'd say to people going the minimalist route -- bring flashlights, pots and pans, and rubbermaid containers/plastic organizers. Batteries are not expensive and are the same as in the US (AA, AAA, C, D, etc) - don't bother bringing them. I saw fairly inexpensive universal plug adapters (US and every other country in the world to NZ) at The Warehouse. And cell phones had been really high on Ebay recently, so I didn't buy an unlocked GSM one before I left. Telecom had a $99 sale this week on several pay-as-you-go phones, so that ended up not as pricey as I had feared. (Telecom is on CDMA, not GSM - Vodafone's cheapest GSM phones were about $60 more.)

My view is probably skewed by what I've had to run out and buy, but I thought I'd share, for what it's worth.