There are so many choices when it comes to moving overseas, but one of the most immediate ones is what to do with all your 'stuff'. Do you pack it all into a giant container and send it off for its own journey by boat? Do you store it all in your home country and hope it won't get ruined living in a storage unit for two years? Do you sell it all and become a Nomad? What is worth bringing and what can you find when you get there?
Well we decided on a strategy that's a mixture of most of the above. After talking it through, we decided to sell all our furniture that we didn't love or that wasn't a family piece and store the rest in a storage unit while we are gone. Because we live in a city, we were able to sell stuff pretty easily on Craigslist (which is where we had bought a bunch of our stuff in the first place).
After researching shipping costs, we determined that actually the cheapest and easiest way of getting stuff to NZ was to bring it with us as extra luggage on the plane. Different airlines have different baggage allowances, but we ended up settling with American Airlines which allows you to check two bags each for free, plus up to an additional 10 bags at $200 USD each with a 50 lb weight limit on each. So, not cheap... but nothing about this move has been...
We decided that four pieces of checked luggage each should be enough to keep up going for the next few years. Our life packed into bags is approximately broken out as follows:
- Casual every day clothes
- Work clothes and shoes
- Hiking and outdoor clothes and equipment
- Limited household goods (a few kitchen knives, sheets, a king size down duvet and some other bits and pieces)
- Electronics and other precious things (jewelry for example) in our carry on
I read a lot of blogs and forums to try and determine what was worth bringing and what was not. As with most things, people had all kinds of different opinions. Some folks recommended stuffing a container full of everything you own, while others had only a handful of things they recommended. Here are the general trends I noticed:
- Don't bring simple electronics from the US - in NZ, like most of Europe, electricity is 220 Volts while in the US we use 120 Volts. Your hair dryer or coffee maker may work, but it will probably burn out pretty quickly. Computers are different because they have a power adapter enabling them to work with either voltage.
- Shoes are super expensive in NZ. I haven't seen this first hand (we have only visited on vacation so far and shoe buying wasn't on the agenda), but almost everyone is in agreement on this. As an interesting aside, #1 on "15 Things you didn't know about NZ" http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/78426373/15-things-no-one-told-me-about-living-in-New-Zealand mentions that people tend to wander around barefoot.... possibly connected...?
- Clothes are expensive - but good quality. Most of what we are bringing are clothes for this reason.
- Furniture, ditto. We're not bringing any furniture, and my hope is that we can find a nice furnished place, so we won't have to buy any either. But from what I have seen on NZ's version of Craigslist - trademe.co.nz, this is definitely the case. For example, we have an awesome memory foam mattress in the States that I bought from Amazon of all places and was shipped from China. The whole thing cost less than $600 USD for a king size. There is really nothing comparable for less than $3,000 NZD ($2,000 USD) and that's without a frame or box spring!
- Some medicines are not available in NZ. For example, Advil PM or Sudafed can't be found in NZ apparently. However some medicines also can't be brought legally into the country - so check before you try!
As for the packing itself... well everything that's staying is more or less packed in giant plastic bins from Costco to protect it from damp/moths/rodents/whatever else may happen to it in storage.
Then in one of our few splurges, we hired movers to do the heavy lifting. Unfortunately I was out of town for the move itself, and I strategically got home only just arrived once the movers had left.
That means we will spend our last two weeks in the US camping out in our house on blow up mattresses and folding tables and chairs. Can't wait!
