The Move
Călin / 24 July 2022
Moving house across continents is not an easy feat: although we took the opportunity to somewhat slim down when we moved houses in Oct. 2020, it was too easy to just pile everything and take it when we moved one mile across town! This time however, we agreed that it makes sense to haul only the minimum number of things we want to keep. We’ll be moving withing New Zealand as well until we find our place, and really, do we need to keep the paper credit card statements from the ’90s?
We contacted a few companies for moving and their first question was “what inventory are you moving?”. So we sat down with a spreadsheet and sorted through our stuff: things we move, things we keep, and things we let go. For all the papers, we went full digital, so both our scanners did extra duty for a few months! Same thing with our collection of photos and films. As for letting go of other things … not so easy. Anca has quite a number of stories to tell from talking to charities and other organizations that are geared toward helping the homeless but take only new stuff. What finally worked was a combination of charities, neighborhood groups such as Buy Nothing and Free Cycle, and Facebook marketplace – turns out that for somethings you just have to put a price on in order to get attention! Electrical appliances outside computers rarely support dual voltages (New Zealand has 240V/50Hz) which meant that we needed to find a home for most of the kitchen appliances, printers, scanners, and power tools. Although one can get a voltage transformer, but at the number of such appliances we had, we’re talking a whole family of transformers, some of them requiring significant power. For example, Anca’s Vitamix blender draws (… by now, was drawing!) 1400W. We ended up taking the Instapot, because online research showed that the ones available in NZ are either the US version or shipped from the US, and we divested of the rest. Although, while in Auckland, we found out that the Instapot US shipped version is a 240V one – yet another reminder to take the information posted on the Internet with a grain of salt!
We kept unloading before the movers came, and then they loaded all the stuff we said we’ll take, and we were still left with half a house full of things! In the end, it was Anca’s friends from the garden club who stepped in and helped us clean up everything else. Thank you Ann, Allen, and Katia!
It has been our plan all along to fly out from Seattle and spend some time with Dan
and Parley before leaving. And thus, after yet another day of sorting, packing, and
cleaning, we packed a car + trailer full of luggage (skis and boots included!) and
stuff, and started toward Seattle.
We detoured through Sacramento to drop a few things for a friend and we were bummed
that at 8pm it was still 96℉ (35.5℃ – yes, we’re moving back to the metric system)!
The heat wave continued for the next couple of days until we reached Vancouver, WA.
And so we spent 10 days in Seattle, visiting with Dan, continuing to pack and re-pack our bags to at least attempt to fit airline limits, and selling our car – which was an adventure on its own right. New Zealand drives on the left, so importing cars requires to refit them with the wheel on the right hand side – a very expensive proposition. Later, I also read that they impose additional taxes on diesel cars. Why? Beats me, because diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline – our car overall mileage was around 40mpg, and with the proper catalytic convertors in place, generate the same level of pollution. After all, it broke my heart, but put it up for sale on Craig’s list. Interestingly, I had a couple of people who reached out saying that this would be their dream car! Unfortunately, none of them came through and we closed the transaction with a wholesaler.
We kayaked on Union Lake,
explored the
Deception Pass State Park,
and the
Ballard Locks.
Beside a few days of working remotely and my regrets that I can not keep the car, these past few days really felt as a vacation!
And off we are!
Obviously not on a boat, but to the West :)