[jen]

Today was quite the day - yesterday Crown came out to box up all our belongings. It was a few hundred dollars difference in the price to have them pack versus self-packing so we let them do it & they did a great job. We thought we were prepared for them, but then a team of 5 guys showed up and started packing like mad so we were jumping to keep ahead of them. We had to rescue a half-eaten container of 'no preservatives' peanut butter that had been packed (sure to be a science experiment gone bad after 2 months at sea!) and they packed a few things we hadn't meant to take, like our christmas tree stand, complete with dried pine sap and needles. Though it was stored in a bathroom cabinet & is in a box labeled 'bathroom storage'; maybe MAF won't notice it there :laugh

Today they parked a 20 ft container in front of our house and loaded up. All went well until about 2 hrs in when they realized not all our things would fit! The crew leader said they could bring up a van and the extra could go in another shipment, but the Crown office said "you don't even want to pay what that would cost!" Let me tell you, nothing adds to the excitement of shipping day like picking through your stuff in the driveway deciding what you reealllly don't want after all!!

We had been told by the estimator that came out to our house we'd be fine in the 20 ft. We had a 1,000 sq ft house plus a garage which was mostly filled with boxed books and 26 cases of wine! We think that's where we went wrong - we told the estimator 15 cases, though if he had told us we'd be cutting it close on the container we could have done a better job of weeding out our stuff - we were operating on the "everything costs more in NZ so take it all" principle.

At any rate, we survived the day and are at my brother-in-law's house drinking celebratory champagne. Tomorrow we head to Tucson for family Thanksgiving and then travel until Christmas. It seems odd not to have any keys for the first time in our adult lives - no house, car or office keys since we have none of the above! We have the laptop so I'll keep reading the forums and hope to meet some of you in person at a Welly meet-up sometime after we arrive in January.

Jen

[StevieD]

Wow, exciting but a tad scary eh! We got that all to look forward to shortly Jen, we must be mad mustn't we?

[wiki]

I almost wonder if I'd rather be out of the house and leave them to it... then it's a bit like lucky did what you find when you unpack! Do they do a list of what goes into every box as they do it?

Our packing is going to be mostly books - I'm planning on drinking all the wine so I get to stock up afresh in NZ :cheers

[jess]

wow - glad you survived the day! We had the opposite problem; they told us we needed a 40 ft container, and our things ended up only filling it half way. They asked us if we had any rope (which was funny because at this point the house was pretty much entirely empty). We didn't so they used -- wait for it - three long pieces of packing tape (I'm not kidding) to keep our house full of stuff from shifting in the container during the couple of months aboard ship. Oddly, nothing broke during the move. I'll never understand.

We self packed, and by the time we left I was happy for the first time in my life to get on a plane. Bliss to do nothing for all those hours.

Glad you are through with all that packing! :clap

[Trigirl]

john masons have just left us. they did a fantastic job of packing everything. i spent the first couple of hours sat in the kitchen reading and the rest of the time sat in the lounge reading. barely moved at all - didn't have to lift a finger. mind you i spent the last few days making sure every last thing we weren't taking had been thrown away and everything we were taking on the plane was packed (and went in the car last night/this morning)

tomorrow we'll find out if it all fits in our 20ft container or not!

[Hannah]

Oh Jen (and Trigirl) - how exciting. sounds like it was quite hair raising , but how exciting to be sitting around with no keys and your adventure about to begin. Will come round soon for us too, and reading these posts just makes the hair stand up on my spine!
Best wishes for your travels over to NZ!!!!
hannah

[willsken]

john masons have just left us. they did a fantastic job of packing everything. i spent the first couple of hours sat in the kitchen reading and the rest of the time sat in the lounge reading. barely moved at all - didn't have to lift a finger. mind you i spent the last few days making sure every last thing we weren't taking had been thrown away and everything we were taking on the plane was packed (and went in the car last night/this morning)

tomorrow we'll find out if it all fits in our 20ft container or not!

I have to say that my day wasn't as relaxed! We had everything packed and in one room waiting for them to put it on the container. We were in the other room packing all the things that were last minute. When they came out to estimate they told us we were well over for a 20 footer so we spent the last month or so getting rid of things we didn't want. I e-bayed quite a lot and we decided to take only one 3 piece suite and leave the other 3 piece behind and we decided to leave my bedroom furniture behind as well.


When they were getting to the end of the stuff we were taking they said there was a bit of room, I asked it they could fit in my bedroom stuff... yup. OK what about that sofa? That was OK to! :clap

So all in all we took a lot more than we expected to be able to. I have to give all the credit to my OH. His packing skills were absolutely fantastic. He wasted NO space and every nook and cranny was filled with something. Every box was treated like a jigsaw puzzle and filled to the brim with no space in them at all. I had about 15 boxes of books and I was fully expecting half of them to be left behind. They all went! :D