One of the hardest things about moving has been clearing out our place.
When you move across town, you can rent a U-Haul to schlep your stuff to your new place. It becomes much more complicated when you move overseas. You have to either pay thousands of dollars for shipping, or have an employer willing to pay for it. Well, we didn’t want to pay ourselves so have resorted to bringing whatever can fit into 4 suitcases. This meant we have to decide what to toss, donate, sell or store.
It was easy to decide what to toss because a lot of the stuff we own was on its last legs anyway. We do have to plan around this part though – i.e., scheduling for Bulk Item Recycling services and asking family for help to move heavy things. As for storage, we are storing some things at my MIL’s house but need to be strategic about what we save.
The most difficult part is when we have to mull over an item that’s in between – not valuable enough to be stored, yet not shabby enough to be thrown away. Do we give it away? If so, to whom? Or can we sell it? Either way, this leads to a whole process of taking photos of the item, writing descriptions, posting it on the relevant platforms – whether it’s WhatsApp if we’re giving it away to family or Facebook and Craigslist if we’re giving or selling it to neighbors. Then, we have to spend time responding to messages, coordinating pick up times, dealing with no shows…which can be super frustrating.
I didn’t realize how time consuming and exhausting this part of moving would be. And we don’t even live in a big place! We dedicated a good part of March and April just to clear things out but STILL have about 30-40% of stuff left. As the big day approaches, we will gradually toss or give more things away.
Hongs Abroad 