A Georgia Girl in Germany

Well, the time has come to pack up and move out. The packers showed up mid-day on Monday and quickly got to work packing all of our stuff. They finished all three kids’ rooms and the hallway closets before calling it a day. Fortunately, since they’re based out of Hanau, they’re staying in a hotel and have been here at 8 a.m. the rest of the week. On Tuesday, they packed up my room and bathroom, the entryway (and closet), the den, and made good progress in the kitchen. They were so efficient that at one point ALL my shoes had been packed! Guess that’s what I get for wearing slippers inside the house. Fortunately, I saw that my shoes were missing before the box into which they had disappeared had been sealed up. Not so for a few items I had set aside to keep Benjamin occupied and for me to work on these past few days. But, when I asked about them, we found the box immediately so I could pull out the desired items. Whew! Disaster averted.

Today, they finished boxing up everything else in the house AND loaded everything except the furniture on the truck. Unfortunately, “everything” included an open box of cleaning supplies that I had set aside. Even though I packed it and it wasn’t sealed, it found its way onto the truck. By the time I realized it was gone, it was too late -- it was toward the front of the truck and inaccessible without unloading several layers of other boxes and furniture. Fortunately, most of my cleaning supplies were elsewhere (not in that box), so it wasn’t a terrible loss. Tomorrow, they pack and load the basement and load the big furniture. They expect to be done by early afternoon.

I have to say, I haven’t seen things packed quite this way before. They don’t use nearly as much paper to wrap every individual item (especially for items in the bedrooms and closets), but the furniture is WRAPPED -- as in BUBBLE WRAPPED -- so nary a scratch will harm it. The item to the right is my antique armoire. Wow! I’m not terribly concerned about the lack of paper in the boxes though since everything’s going directly to our new house instead of going into storage (see below for more details). Hopefully it makes the unpacking go a little quicker without all the extra paper that usually envelopes each and every individual toy, game, jar or pencil.

Benjamin was surprised to see his room packed up when he came home on Monday, but was even more surprised to see the progress on Tuesday and today. Here, he’s checking out the work going on in the kitchen.

There are a number of boxes labeled “things” and “items,” so it should be interesting when I go to unpack. Hmmmm. I’ve been making educated guesses and writing what (I think) is in the boxes based on which rooms they’re in. We’ll see how close to the mark I am. I also expect that I’ll go stir-crazy when trying to get to my dishes. So the boxes aren’t unbearably heavy, they packed my dishes on the bottoms of boxes with Tupperware, plastic cups and other lighter items on top. So, I’ll have to unpack all the lesser-used items from the tops of the boxes to get to the desired dishes at the bottoms. Oh well, c’est la vie.

The other minor irritation is that I requested a door-to-door move last Monday at my transportation office. However, my request wasn’t forwarded to the company doing my move. When I talked with the packers, they indicated that my stuff was all going into a warehouse and would be delivered later. EGADS! After checking their schedule, the earliest they thought they could deliver everything was Aug. 1 -- the EXACT day that Benjamin and I are flying to the states. When I asked about a Saturday delivery, the manager indicated that they can’t force their employees to work on Saturday. However, one of the individuals here packing my stuff called several of his coworkers and convinced them to work on Saturday to deliver everything for me. Yeah! There should be five or six of them, so it should go by quickly! Plus, this now gives me Friday to get my utilities squared away. I suppose things work out for the best after all.

Labels: Benjamin