Hey Y’all – It’s June! Crazy, huh? I’m still trying to figure out what happened to May! Definitely bittersweet, although I am VERY over the 90 to 100 degree Fahrenheit temps we’ve had for the last few months. I’m praying for some mid-70s in Minnesota. Heck, I’d even take the 80’s. Anything but 90’s with humidity.
As for our final preparations . . . our pack-out is scheduled for June 13th to 15th (one week from today—eek!). This pack-out feels more challenging than others because of how long we’ll be separated from the majority of our stuff. Let me see if I can explain the complexity in a way that makes sense…
So, there are essentially four buckets that any given item in our house could end up in. The first is the donation pile, which probably represents about 25% of what’s remaining (we’ve already sold and donated a fair amount, but there are a few things we’ll use until the very end before donating). This is a larger amount than normal simply because India’s climate has been hard on our things AND a lot of our big items are 13 years old and need a refresh. I even still have a few items from the townhouse I purchased in 2005! The great thing about India is that there is lots of need, so you know your hand-me-downs will be put to good use.
The second bucket is our air freight, which will get shipped to DC and arrive 2-3 weeks after we get there. Our total amount of air freight is 600 pounds, which needs to cover us for our year in DC. Granted, we are going into a furnished apartment, but those 600 pounds are still very precious and much debate has been going on about what they should include.
Bucket number three is our suitcases for the plane. Each of us get two-50 pound suitcases (300 pounds total for our family), which needs to get us through our home leave in Minnesota and Oregon, plus the two to three weeks in DC until our air freight arrives. That adds up to about 9 weeks for Nia and I and 6 weeks for Nick. There is a small subcategory of key items that need to stay with us at all times during transit. These include medical records, medicine, camera gear, electronics and our go-bag full our of most essential documents (Car title, will, birth certificates, etc).
The final bucket is made up of our boat stuff, which in State Department lingo is called HHE or Household Effects. HHE maxes out at 7000 pounds and can be shipped from multiple locations. I think we’ll end up with about 3000 or so pounds or so shipping from Mumbai that will go directly to a warehouse for a year until we arrive in Kazakhstan, at which point it will begin its journey to us. We also plan to do a supplemental shipment from DC of new things that we acquire during our year there.
And finally, Almaty is a Consumables post, meaning we’ll have 2000 pounds allotted for food—over and above our other allowances—that we can send for our time there (just like we did for Malawi). This will make for a lot of shopping in spring of 2023 and one very stuffed apartment!
The only thing we currently have in storage is our 2011 Kia Rondo, which we haven’t seen since 2015 when we ended our DC tour. In Almaty they drive on the same side as the US, so we’ll be bringing that with us. It’s been in a warehouse somewhere outside of DC for 6 years and they’re supposed to be starting it once a month to keep it running, but I’m fully expecting that its going to be oh-so-very-dead. We are considering going carless for our time in DC. We think it’d be fun challenge. Will keep you posted on if we decide to send it straight to Kazakhstan or if we break down and take it out of storage to use in DC!
I have more updates but this post has gotten quite long, so I’ll save them for my next post. Thanks for reading and please keep sending me zen vibes as we head into packout—I am feeling very rusty after four years of not doing this!
Packouts from the Past
Lilongwe
DC
Lima
Manila
