Death By a Thousand Boxes... and a Toddler

This was our fifth move overseas, so if anyone should be getting the hang of it, it should be me, right? However, there was one new factor for this latest move that raised the frustration, complication and tear-enducing levels to staggering new heights and it had nothing to do with my husband's astounding procrastination abilities; it was simply, the toddler factor.

When we did our pack-out from Kuwait, I wisely hired our housekeeper to take Bean out of the house for the majority of the chaos. And that made a huge difference in my ability to scurry around and oversee the packing. Fast forward four months and we are happily seeing all those carefully wrapped boxes being unloaded into our garden in Jordan like long-lost friends (yeah, you get a little over-emotional at the prospect of seeing your sheets and dish drainer when you've been living out of suitcases for four months). As the 130 boxes were coming through the front door, I'd quickly glance at the label on the box and direct it's placement - master bedroom, nursery, kitchen, dining-dump-room, etc. - and in doing so I caught a few amusing notations; "lady kits," "flash's light," "baby drops" and "rattan decor". (Upon unpacking, I discovered "lady kits" was toiletries and our "rattan decor" were two straw seat things from Ikea. I never did discover what the "baby drops" were, but the box was big.)

One of the benefits of having to wait for your stuff, in theory, is that you have a few weeks or months in your new home to decide how you want things set up. So once all the filling arrives, you would think it would be relatively easy to unpack and put things where they were going to live for the next three years. And in the past this process was arduous and exhausting, but I never felt like I was losing my mind; until this time.

Unpacking with the "aid" of an eager toddler presented a whole new level of challenges I had not anticipated (though I probably should have). Being fully enmeshed in the "helpful" stage, meant Bean would follow me around and unpack, or re-pack, depending on her whim, whatever box was open and in front of her. Often she'd toddle off with whatever gem she'd discovered and I'd have to go searching throughout the rooms of chaos to find my other boot or camera bag or shower gel bottle (unearthed from the "lady kits" box). If she came upon a box that was still sealed, she'd quickly switch modes and slap on her crampons, grab her carabiners and start climbing, causing lots of Mommy exclamations like "Oh, be careful!" and "Oh, no, let's not do that," and other such insightful statements. Never-ending fun abounded, but the unpacking progress was painfully stagnant and my needs for a tidy nest were going unheeded.

So by day eight of this frivolity I was crankier than a toddler with an unfulfilled demand and felt like it was never going to end. There wasn't one room where I could happily sit and gaze at my little organized oasis. I couldn't even hide in the bathroom because there were "lady kits" that needed organizing that I was constantly telling Bean to "put it back, put it back", wishing I'd get around to just putting it away.

On top of all the fun-with-toddlers I was having, I was also faced with the realization that we own a huge amount of breakable, non-toddler-friendly items, lovingly collected from all our worldly travels. We have piles of glassware and surprisingly sharp metal lamps from Egypt, ceramics from Italy, Portugal and Turkey, framed photos and wooden masks from Tanzania. Why did it never occur to us to just collect pillows from around the world, or country-inspired teaspoons?

The winds finally started to shift the day I got my closet organized. I found myself returning to it repeatedly just to remind myself that it was possible; there was an organizational light at the end of the closet.

So by day ten we were about 90% unpacked and organized and my breathing was far more regular and hardly cried at all. However, now each room had a little pile of what I refer to as the niggly bits; those weird little items that don't really fit anywhere that just end up end up cluttering drawers or baskets. Part of me felt like they should be properly sorted and put away and not just stashed, but that part of me was quickly quashed as my energy, interest and decision-making capabilities had been thoroughly drained dry, and frankly I couldn't give a damn where the candlewick scissors went or my high school calculus calculator, that should never have come overseas, should go.

So in the end, Bean and I survived the unpacking-with-toddlers process, and we now have a house full of lovingly stashed hard-to-reach breakables. And with her helpful packing, unpacking and stashing abilities, we only managed to lose one remote control that we thought has been accidentally "packed" back into a box that went out to trash. Of course, we found it nestled safely in her toy bin the day after the replacement arrived in the mail, but it's probably best to have two, anyway; I have a feeling "fun with toddlers" won't end with just the final moving box.

Farewell house, and thanks for all the memories

As ex-pats, our lives are often defined by what country we are living in and for how long. And while our houses may be temporary, our home travels with us. Having said that, there's always a touch of sadness in saying farewell to yet another house. Last June, as I stood in our living room, after making the final check to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything, I took one final glance out the wall of windows at the lights of Kuwait City sparkling below me. Our apartment's view over the Gulf and downtown Kuwait City had always been one of my favorite things about this house. But as I stood there, I had flashes of the previous year we lived here. In that time our lives had changed forever. Primarily, we became parents with the adoption of our daughter. Plus we had made some great friends, had taken a lot of fabulous trips, and had done our best to live life to the fullest.

But as I watched the cars race up and down Gulf Road, and the lights of the city's skyscrapers reflect off the waves, I found it was the more mundane memories that were coming to me. This simple rug beneath my feet that came with the furnished apartment was where my daughter had taken her first steps only a few months earlier. The desk in the corner was where I wrote my articles for my first paying gig.

This house was where my daughter's first Christmas was, as well as her first birthday. It was also the last home for our sweet cat Ricky, who we'd lost only a week earlier. I had made iced camel cookies and about 200 peanut butter balls in the kitchen for our Christmas cookie party last year. I had walked literally hundreds of miles along the Gulf with my girlfriends as we pushed our strollers in the pre-scorching summer months.

I had gone on one of my crazy crafty trips and made 15 cloth diapers out of my husband's T-shirts at that dining table. I created an intricate paper butterfly mobile for my daughter's room that I only realized later I couldn't hang because the ceilings were too high, so it hung off of a pipe in our guest bathroom instead. And in the tiny little bathroom attached to the maids quarters, I did my best to help a little blind kitten I found along the Gulf. It took me three days of trying to grab him and then I spent another day cleaning him up and trying to get him to eat while he purred in my lap. In the end I took him to the vet but he was too far gone, and we lost him. I try to tell myself that at least he had a warm soft place in the end and got his purr back, but it still hurts.

We had some silly times too, of course. Like when I was taking a shower and the glass door decided to fall off a hinge so I'm standing there naked, holding the 200 pound door, under the shower, screaming for my husband at the other end of the apartment. We got it balanced so I was able to get out of the shower and we called for maintenance to come remove it in case it fell (or exploded into tiny shards of glass, like happened to another friend). It only took about three days and a little nudging, but they did finally come and replace it. Then we had the telephone guy who would only come to repair the phone at 10 o'clock at night. That took at least a week to iron out. And one of my favorite moments, was watching the washer repairman use his iPhone as a flashlight when he was checking out the drum. Quite a juxtaposition from the repairmen in Egypt who would routinely jam a screwdriver into a socket to see if it was live.

Like any house, this one was filled to the brim with memories, good and bad, but all of them densely rich. So as I closed the door and headed downstairs to where my husband and daughter were waiting in the car that would take us to the airport, I said a little thank you to this house that had been a home to us for the previous year. Then I packed up my memories, wedged them into a corner of the diaper bag and headed out; wondering what our next house would hold and thinking about all the amazing memories that were to come.

To Nest or Not To Nest

(Written August 2012) Living any nomadic life, whether you’re an expat, military family, wayward soul, or just have itchy roots, presents you with the constant question of, “Do I take it with me?” And if you’re lucky enough to be moved by someone else, then you have the added question of, “Is this worth its weight - literally?”

Having just completed our fourth overseas move (four homes in two countries), I find I am still flummoxed by what constitutes “home” out of our pile of possessions; just how much stuff is nest-worthy? If we lived a stable lifestyle, with a constant zip code and the metaphorical picket fence, then I’d be happily rearranging our lamps and pictures to accommodate our latest acquisitions from travels abroad. However, instead I find myself wondering whether us carting around the Pharaonic plates from Cairo or the Turkish bowls or Italian ceramics are necessary for us to truly feel safe and secure.

With every move, I find myself sending another 10-15% of unnecessary items off to storage, and yet we’re still overflowing with beloved personal possessions. With our first move, over four years ago, we admittedly had no idea what we “should” and “should not” bring, in terms of practical items as well as nesting items. So we brought it all. Not literally, but close. Our two big lessons learned from that move were leave the furniture at home (many of the houses are furnished), and leave the 1,000 pounds of books at home (we’re avid readers and also considered books a design attribute, until we had to personally pay to ship them home).

To add to the quandary, we now have a baby, and regardless of her mere 12 pounds, she comes with piles of stuff and from what I hear, her piles will only get larger. Which means ours will conversely need to get smaller. It all seems fairly simple on the surface. Pare down to the bare basics. Do I need sixteen spatulas in varying colors and sizes? No. Do I need twenty-seven pairs of shoes, including four-inch heels I’ve never worn? No. Do I need all our framed artwork and photos and wall-hangings and decorative lamps? No. There, done. Oh wait, there’s one more towering obstacle: my beloved husband and his squirrel-like tendencies.

My husband is a self-admitted, level 12, blackbelt, highly ranked, packrat, and more than happy to stay that way. Admittedly I knew what I was getting in to when I married him; during our dating years, before my first visit to his apartment in Baltimore, he apparently (I found out later) looked around at all the bundles of cables, stacks of books, unopened mail, mounds of clothes and decided that the “deal breaker” for me would be the brand new large red funnel for changing car oil (still with the label on it). So in preparation for the love of his life coming to call, he wedged the funnel in the top of the closet. To this day, this remains his method of “cleaning” - it’s all about the wad and stuff. Any cubby or hole is fair game and any and all horizontal surfaces will be assimilated for “storage”, and that has included the wayward snoozing feline.

Despite all the forewarning and glaring red flags trying to wiggle out from under the piles, which he has lovingly named Mylandias, I can’t deny a secret hope that upon being exposed to the gleaming other side, he too would find great inner peace in a tidy home. He hasn’t. So over the years I periodically don my chain mail and rubber gloves, and with piles of trash bags in hand I stage a full frontal attack on any Mylandias I feel are getting too unwieldy and may start organizing and rising up against the regime (me).

My initial caveat, which has mostly been granted, is that he keep his Mylandias within designated boundaries with a door that must close. Then whatever happens within the boundary, stays in the boundary; until I periodically stage a coup.

Following our second move, I initiated another caveat entitled, “Do you really need that?” Unfortunately a packrat’s answer to that question is always a panicky “YES!” Which makes purging and sorting practically impossible. Which has resulted in over four years of carting around the world bins filled with telephone line and extension cords, knotted masses of wires, 1,000 feet of “4-pair communications cable” (a must for every happy household), 650 various-sized cable ties (though I will admit these are handy for “locking” suitcases), and hundreds of blank DVDs. This is only the top layer of stuff; the bottom layers can only be even more obscure. I’m not doubting the usefulness of any of these items, but when your organizational method is left up to the “wad and stuff” ways, the likelihood of you finding even one foot of the “4-pair communications cable” is not good. And in more than one case, my husband’s reaction when he can’t find something is just to to buy more. Hence further impeding the underlying issue.

As I see it, our basic problem is that we need to recognize that the “I may need that someday” method of decision making when it comes to moving, needs to be radically altered. While the answer to that question will always be a resounding yes, it doesn’t mean you have to strap it on your back as you move through life.

As I said, I have my own spatula-like 1,000 feet of communications cable that I’ve been lugging around the world. But Mylandias aside, because they will require either a psychiatrist or a backhoe to address, I have truly come to realize that home is not what you fill it with, or decorate it with, it’s not even how much you nest in order to make it feel “homey,” it’s really just the people (and cats) who live within its walls.

So going forth, for the next overseas move, I vow to leave the stilletos at home, pick my favorite three spatulas, bring just a few “nesting” items and maybe allow 100 feet of “4-pair communications cable”. You have to have something to feed to the Mylandias; let them eat cable, I say.