Yo Ho, Yo Ho, 13 Boxes and a Bottle of Rum!

OK, so there is no bottle of rum, and there is probably no pirate ship (sigh!), but our boxes left yesterday on a high seas adventure!  So I guess it's official, we really are moving to Ireland, or at least our things are.  Now lets address the non pirate related part of that title... yes, that says 13 BOXES!  As they say you can't take it all with you.  Of course that's a reference to death, and no one is dying here!  But that cliche does hold true with this move.  We simply can't take it all with us, nor would we want to.   So somehow we manged to narrow it down to the essentials and it came out to be only 13 boxes.  Pretty impressive right?

So what exactly is in those 13 boxes?  They consist mostly of clothing, and shoes, but there are also some personal items like photo albums, and small paintings.  Additionally I found space for my good knives, measuring cups and spoons (in case I want to use an American recipe) and my slap chop, yes I have, use, and love, a gadget from an infomercial, check it out here!

One little trick that helped to  fit  cram it all in was taking advantage of our resources.  Working in the food science building has it's pay offs, chocolate milk anytime being one of them, but what I'm talking about here is the industrial sized vacuum sealer!  Typically this bad boy is used to seal large blocks of cheese that weigh more than most 2 year olds, but we put it to work in a slightly different way. Taking a hint from yet another infomercial  (should I be charging for this free advertising?) space bags  inspired us.  Check this out:

I apologize for not having the forethought to take a before picture.

So much better than you could ever do with your at home vacuum, no offense space bags.  We mostly sucked the air out of things we wouldn't care if they were wrinkled much, like socks, athletic gear, etc.

Here are a few pictures of our moving mess, and sending off our boxes.

Adam packing up his bike

 inside of the bike case

some of Adam's boxes

the boxes on the right are the boxes headed to Ireland

Adam in the truck saying good bye to his bike!

There is one more thing I want to address here.  If all of my clothes and shoes are on a boat for the next 4-6 weeks (oh yea, did I mention that it's 4-6 weeks!?) what am I going to wear between now and our reunion?
I did my best, and I think I'm down to one suitcase!  It's a big suitcase, but still that's just crazy for a gal like me!  While I was sorting through what was going to be shipped and what I would leave behind to wear for the next month and a half I recalled a story I had seen on the today show called closet diet, living with only six items of clothing.  While I certainly have more than 6 items of clothing packed, I tried to take into account some of the basic principles they discussed.  So I have mostly black, white and grey, and only a few colorful tops and scarves that don't take up too much room.  I also only have three pairs of shoes!  Tennis shoes, black boots, and neutral flats.  Wish me luck!

Have to get back to packing up the kitchen now!  I think the worst is over, with the exception of the horrible flu that has taken over my body.  I'm feeling a little better today, but not great.  However, as they say... the show must go on!