anxieuse abroad

Figuring out what to do with every single thing I own was one of the most difficult parts of this move. I’m not a big packrat but it still took days and weeks and months of difficult and often emotional work. At first, we thought we’d store anything we thought we might want to keep, head abroad, and come back in 6 months to either ship, sell, or donate everything. I was aware that immigrants have 1 year from arrival in France to import personal goods without paying taxes on them. I wasn’t sure how much that was going to be, but sounded like something to be avoided if possible. I figured at the 6 month point we’d have a better idea if we wanted to stay and if it looked like our businesses were successful enough to get our visas renewed. What was the point of shipping everything if we either didn’t like it or were going to get kicked out?

But as our move date grew closer, I started to think there would be no guarantee we’d know if we wanted to stay for more than a year after those first stress-filled, admin-heavy 6 months, or that our visas would get renewed. It seemed like more work and stress to have to come back, just as we were getting settled, to deal with all of our belongings. I honestly also think I wanted to push myself into a “no turning back” scenario where I’d just have to figure it the fuck out — how to stay. I didn’t, I don’t, want to come back yet again from only one year abroad.

As I was the one who was working full-time, I said to my partner, “You will be in charge of logistics!” And we agreed that it would probably be less stressful to pack it all up and be done when we boarded that flight to Paris. Once we’d landed on a shipping company and chose our shipping container size, I taped off a corner of the living room so we could visualize how much space we had to fill. At first it seemed we’d be well within our 7′ x 6′ x 8′ limit. We had some tense discussions about what should be sold and what should go — I wanted to keep the antique dresser my mom gave me in high school that was beat to shit from the dozens of moves it had already endured; he wanted at least 1 of the 2 Herman Miller chairs that he’d gotten for free when a previous workplace remodeled. Neither would make the cut in the final days.

We worked our asses off and spent nights and weekends in constant garage-sale mode. My partner took one for the team and got back on Facebook so that we could sell on Marketplace in addition to Craigslist. We gave things to our friends, cut furniture prices every couple days, and made several drops to Goodwill. We sold our beds, our dishes, our furniture, our cars. I teared up when a sweet school teacher / musician played Blackbird (one of the first songs I taught myself to play) on the Martin guitar I bought in 1999. I cried again when I told my friends how selling it felt like giving up even though it had mostly stood in the corner gathering dust and lost dreams for 20+ years. A nice couple came and took our custom built catio (and sent us photos of their roly-poly torties enjoying the outside) and I ugly cried when I handed over the keys to my beloved yellow Spark to a lovely human who was starting her life over after a divorce. Those wheels had meant freedom to me too 10 years ago. This process lasted for months, was incredibly emotional, and I’m glad we started early. We lost money on almost everything. I questioned my sanity and my life choices daily.

2 weeks before our flight, our shipping container was deposited outside our 1-car garage. The plan was that we’d have it ready to go about a week later, when we’d move into a hotel which would give us a few days to finish packing and cleaning before handing over our apartment keys. I’d everything mapped out and planned knowing from dozens of moves that the last 24 hours are always a shitshow. To illustrate:

• I didn’t pick-up unsold (and too expensive to donate) consignment items in time to put in the shipping container and had to send them in precious suitcase space
• My spouse didn’t look in the drawer under the oven when he was packing the kitchen and so all of our (MY) pans missed the shipment
• I didn’t want to pay to have the couch removed thinking someone would want it for free and if the awesome maintenance guy hadn’t wanted it at our move out inspection we’d have been royally fucked
• We had so many last minute things that didn’t fit into our suitcases that had I not meet my brilliant and generous friend Amy for dinner who took those pans, a giant bag of miscellaneous coins, 2 Bialettis, a milk frother, clothes, Birkenstock slippers, some terra cycling I didn’t have time to mail, and gawd knows what else we’d have had to bin so many perfectly good items
• The 7 people that really really wanted my free Craigslist pillows ghosted me
• The litter box… what were we going to do with the litter box that we needed up until the last minute??

If I have one tip for folks packing for a move abroad it’s this:

Book your final days in a hotel with an unlocked dumpster.

You will be horrified and amazed at the amount of last minute detritus that must be culled. Being able to surreptitiously offload your catbox, threadbare moving clothes, half eaten yogurt tub, and anything else that will just not fit into your luggage and cannot be given away minutes before heading to the airport feels like a godsend. Trust me.

Once again, I’m in awe of the community of people who helped us, without whom this would have been a nightmare. From the folks that paid good money for our stuff and wished us well, the others that got things for free but came to pick them up, our friends who wanted the nice things that we couldn’t sell and didn’t have the heart to toss, Danny and Amy and Amanda who in those final hours literally saved our asses taking items off our hands, to my mom who carefully and lovingly packed up most of my precious art and my stepdad Mike who connected with a local bike store, picked up boxes, and dismantled and packed our bikes — I’m so lucky for all of you. And I fucking miss you. ♥️