Packed

All of our personal things and furniture are now packed into a not very neat area of about 9 square meters. The last few weeks before we left were a mess, one which engulfed the lounge and dining rooms until we both got to a point of packing anything into any available box to get it out of the way.

In hindsight, some useful things to have done when packing include labelling boxes, having boxes for particular rooms such as ‘bathroom things’, sorting through our things to get rid of things we don’t need any more, and putting boxes we will need on arriving home at the front of the storage area. These aren’t revelations and they were in the back of our minds but somehow in the mess and stress it just didn’t happen like that.

We are now in Finland (more on that later) and the planning, stress and lack of sleep of the last few weeks has definitely been worth it. Next year we will go through everything in the house and give away or get rid of those things we don’t need and finish off all the little things that were left undone.

In short, if you need to pack up your house, start very, very early!