Next to nothing and IKEA

Family Travel

I can't update here often enough to keep up with the pace of how quickly things are changing. For so long it has felt like holding patterns, in the wait of this process of moving over seas there were large stretches of just that, waiting. Waiting for borders to open and exam slots to be scheduled, waiting to apply for positions, waiting to sell our home, and waiting to apply for visa's. Suddenly we are thrust out of the wait and into the current of change. Last week we sold our house and pretty much everything in it and moved into a sweet little furnished rental on the east side, one of my favourite areas in Nashville. We are soaking it up in this perfectly laid out house trying to get in as much friend time as possible. I am frantically applying for and interviewing online (at all sorts of strange hours due to the time change) for jobs in both England and Scotland. I am plodding through the immense amount of paperwork and applications for Visa's x 6 with a couple added stressors like limited biometric appointments and a pending passport for my third baby that will hopefully arrive any day now. This is everything we knew was coming, and try as I might, some of it was impossible to plan for. How do you plan to move a family of 6 to another country and what do you do about all of the things? Along the way the most often asked question has been around our stuff, what will we take, how are our kids coping with limited space for items, what will we do when we arrive. The basic answer is we're taking next to nothing and IKEA.

The past year I have been slowly weeding through, cleaning out, and minimizing our belongings. 6 months ago I tried pretty hard to put a halt on purchasing anything that would not be coming with us and in December we focused hard on directing the kids towards things that would be transportable. This looked different depending on age. Our older two, who are mostly out of the toy phase and into electronics (which are mostly portable) haven not had too hard of a time with this. For our youngest I started guiding her towards small collections of things, in particular these adorable little Maileg mice that she can easily stow in her backpack along with a few other treasures (thanks to @thegetalong for helping me outfit her with the smallest cutest things). For my 7 year old this has proved to be the hardest challenge, she is by far taking the most space because if I donate one more stuffed animal it may just push her over the emotional edge. Part of the solution for this is vacuum bags (seriously thank the godesses for vacuum bags) luckily all her little stuffies fit into one and the suction down pretty well, however I have put a strict ban on the purchase of any more until we are relocated!

Each family member gets a large checked bag, a carry on, and a back pack for this journey. Our checked bags include all clothing and shoes as well as a set of sheets and a towel for each person. Carry on bags are reserved for treasured must have items when we arrive, for the boys this is gaming equipment, for Frances this is all her magnet tiles and Maileg toys; for Elsie, you guessed it, more stuffed animals. For me I have my scrubs and all my things I need for a new job (stethoscope, clogs, etc...) and for Sean, well what he packs is what I am officially calling not my problem, I have to pack all the other bags, he's on his own for carry on items. We looked at various modes of transport including options for shipping a pallet for items like books, art, records, and kitchen things. In the end, on the best advice from @happilycuratedchaos, we decided to ship Sean's Toyota matrix over because it is shockingly affordable and allows us to pack it full of all our things. Mostly it will be filled with books, records, kitchen items that are expensive to replace like utensils and dishes, bake ware, and things I know I will want to set up our house like comforters, down pillows, sheets, coats and bulkier items we wont need right away. I am pretty sure Sean's box of keepsakes and some hockey gear made the list as well. While slowly selling every piece of furniture we own, I have have been compiling an extensive IKEA list of items to start with for furnishing our new place, wherever that is. I am not ready to commit to a furnished home with used mattresses, I have seen what we do to a mattress at our house, and I just cannot even with a strangers mattress. We will need to quarantine for 2 weeks when we arrive, this will likely take place at an air bnb, I am hoping to have a large IKEA order delivered and to spend that two weeks putting together a lot of furniture (while drinking whiskey and trying not to kill each other).

In addition to packing the list of important tasks for me has been obtaining extra copies of birth certificates, checking all passports and documents we will need, getting the most up to date medical records for each family member, and ensuring we can each get a 90 day supply of our prescriptions right before we leave so that we have time to set up care when we arrive. Trying to trouble shoot getting our school records because there is a chance we would need to leave 1-2 weeks before the school year ends, and I have no idea what I will need to enroll them in school once we arrive. It is a lot! Up to this point most the to do list was things that needed to wait, and now it is time to do it all at once. It is equal parts exciting and terrifying to be un moored with 4 kids, no secured job yet, and no house, but what is an adventure without a bit of risk (insert me vomiting from anxiety here)?

This post brought to you from the 1 hour waiting room time of my oldest child’s therapy session.