All Our Stuff
Posted by Cottontimer on 09 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: Expat Life
Four moving companies have come this week to give us quotations for our move to London next month. Our apartment’s not that big and we haven’t bought any big ticket items like furniture or full sets of china like many of our friends so I really don’t think we have that much stuff. But each time I walked the movers through, I felt as if they were judging us. For example, they all thought they were so funny commenting on the amount of toys we have.
Since I’ve been doing show-and-tell all week, here’s a general idea of what’s hiding in our cupboards, cabinets, and closets.
Kitchen
- 1 shelf of glasses, cups, and mugs.
- 1 shelf of pots and pans, and other small kitchen equipment
- 1 shelf of fancy glasses, tea cups & saucers in their original boxes that I don’t dare use because they’re too precious
- 1 shelf of plastic containers.
- 1 shelf of tea, coffee, vitamins, medicine, and other consumables that we’re allowed to bring
- 4 shelves of decorative items that were never unwrapped from our previous move; many were gifts
- 2 shelves of framed paintings, cross stitch, and other artwork – also never displayed here
Living Room
- 3 large plastic containers of toys
- 1 Little Tikes Patrol Police Coupe
- 1 Fisher Price Walker/Bike
- 2 cabinets of toys and others scattered around
- 1 cabinet of children’s books and magazines, Baby Einstein Discovery cards, Brain Quest cards, etc.
- 1 DVD player
- 1 ten-year-old laser printer still in the box because its voltage is 110 and Vietnam is 220 (never bothered to get a voltage converter)
- 1 cabinet of my books and magazines
- 1 play gym
- 1 kids flip-open sofa
- 1 cabinet of CD’s and DVD’s
Bedrooms
- 5 closets of clothes
- 1 closet of crafts supplies including 2 boxes of magazines and 1 sewing machine
- 1 closet of old baby toys, strollers, car seats, and other goodies I’m hiding from Stephen
- 1 closet of blankets and bed linen
- 1 closet of suitcases
- 2 boxes of books
- 3 boxes of CD’s and video games
- 3 gaming consoles and accessories
Doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me for a family of 3. What do you think?
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Absolutely the worst part about moving. You just wish it would somehow transport itself from point A to point B. TIP: A year from now, if you still have stuff in boxes, just get rid of it. It wasnt important enough to unpack and you did not miss/need it.
mdmhvonpa: Ooooh. I see you’ve been a fly on our walls. I certainly do have stuff in boxes but mostly it’s because our apartment doesn’t have adequate display areas. Luckly, I’m no packrat so I’ve been clearing stuff out left and right.
seems like stephen has the most amount of stuff! heehee.
packing is no fun. it took me more dan 1/2yr to fully shift my stuff from old house to my new house, and i had to be firm with myself and threw lotsa stuff away! i’m kinda sentimental (garang guni in my parents’ view!) and i keep all sorta things (rubbish in my parents’ view!).
and after shifting back from hostel to home for about 8mths, i still have 2 boxes of things unpacked!
good luck with the packing and moving babe!
smallbully: LOL. Yes, I think he does have a significant amount of toys. But not much more than each of us.
I still have stuff at my parents’ house in California and it will be a while before I can bring it all to our own home in Singapore.
Good luck to THE MOVERS on the packing and moving!
erm, you can actually make an accounting of your stuff, on one page…. you’re way ahead of us!
river2sea72: One of the advantages of never having owned or lived in our own home before. Actually, a list of everything we owned in three different countries would be a totally different affair.
Man I hate moving. The worse part of staying in hostel during uni was definitely the moving in & out. Almost enough to wish that I’d always lived at home. Good thing though was that I learnt the value of being really minimalist after that…
Doesn’t seem like that much stuff. I think my family has more junk, but we’ve lived in the same house for alot longer, have alot more space to fill up and we’ve got more people but I guess that still doesn’t justify the amount of junk we have.
Keuq: I remember moving in and out of the dorms every year too. My parents probably hated helping us even more! hehe
heh, i’ll be waiting for u to move to sg for good!
I know the feeling–we have moved several times before buying this house (and we still have another move contemplated). The movers always complain about all of our books (over 200 boxes) and their biggest bugagoo, the piano. It’s a very modest upright so we are lucky not to have a grand!
That’s not much stuff at all!!! (says she of the many hundreds of books house)
KChew: Non-readers will never understand how we could amass so many books. Even my piddly 5 or so boxes gets commented on. I’m glad I don’t have a piano to move, though, because I’d be too upset if it were to get damaged.
qadira: Books always elicit groans from anyone who’s involved in moving. But, luckily, they’re not so easy to damage as long as they stay dry. The movers’ backs, though,…. hehe