…and I don’t know the name of that ship, but it’s going to have a bunch of our stuff on it.

One of the questions we’ve been getting about this exciting new chapter of our lives is “how does one…move from Indiana to New Zealand? Like, logistically?” And that’s a fair question, with three answers.

  1. Most of the stuff in our house came from Costco, IKEA, and Amazon. As of last month, New Zealand has all three!
  2. We’re going to vacuum seal the stuff we put in our suitcases.
  3. A bunch of stuff is going on a boat!

So, that’s what this post is about: how to get our stuff to the literal other side of the planet?

Reduce

First of all, we’re definitely downsizing. The cars are being sold (they have a pretty fatal flaw anyway). And we’ve engaged the services of an estate sale company called Flipside to come in and sell everything we don’t take with us; after we leave, they’ll come in and categorize everything, run a sale, put anything that doesn’t sell in their consignment shop, and then donate anything that nobody wants. They’ll even take our batteries to Tox Drop for us. Then they take their cut and send us a check.

So what are we leaving? Lots of books (though we’re also taking lots of books. We have a lot of books). Furniture (see note above about Costco and IKEA). Craft supplies. A bunch of DVDs and Blu-Rays. Most of our game consoles. Many board games and RPG books. Most things that plug into the wall (New Zealand uses the AU/NZS 3112 power connector, which is not the same thing as the NEMA 5-15P. Plus, it’s at 230V, so it would probably make our stand mixer and Natalie’s sewing machine explode). Almost everything in the garage. David’s box of cables that he’s had for fifteen years.

Honestly, David has kind of wondered if Natalie is actually just pulling a ruse to get us to get rid of a lot of stuff.

Incidentally, we’re not selling our house. Maybe more on that another time, but we’re also not shipping it, so it’s not really relevant to this particular post.

Remove the Air

We don’t need to take the air with us in our luggage. They have air in New Zealand, free of charge! So we got a vacuum sealer and are using it on stuffed animals, clothes, blankets, that sort of thing. Those vacuum-sealed items go into our checked bags and our carry-on bags, and then we put them on an airplane!

One exception to the air: we’re leaving air in the kids’ bike tires, which we’re taking with us (along with the rest of their bikes). The kids each have a beloved Guardian Bike, and unfortunately they don’t ship to New Zealand. But we do! Plus, we figured landing in the middle of summer would mean that they would want to go on bike rides. So the kids’ second checked “bag” will actually be their bike, which the people at the Guardian Bikes factory in Seymour, Indiana helpfully boxed back up for us since the airline requires sporting goods to be in a box or case.

But anyway, yeah. Boring answer to this one: we’re just making it real small. Except the bikes. Aside from being disassembled, they’re staying the normal size.

Really Slowly

For the stuff we want eventually, but don’t need right away, we are employing the services of an international shipping company called U Pak We Ship. They sent us a “crate,” which is really just a glorified cardboard box on a wooden pallet. We packed some boxes, and then put those boxes inside the box, which they’ll put inside another box and send it to New Zealand. And when it arrives—ahh-ha-ha-ha!—I’ll…take the stuff out. Probably no hammers or smashing will be involved.

But it’ll take a while. The shipping container they’re going to put it in goes on a boat, and boats (I don’t know if you’ve heard) go slower than airplanes. We sent the crate off on the Monday before Christmas, and we’re expecting it to arrive in Auckland sometime in March.

What goes in there? Well, that’s a little bit complicated. Some of the stuff we don’t need right away was easy: our home server, some games and gaming stuff, a large number of books (oh my gosh we have so many books), our wall art and family photos, the big world map we keep on the wall, a good selection of toys. You might think that off-season clothing would also be easy, and you’d be right, except that we’re probably moving at the worst possible time for that because “off-season” in Auckland, being on the other side of the equator, is “in-season” in Indianapolis; we need our winter clothing until we leave, and in New Zealand, we need our summer clothing when we walk out of the airport. So we can’t be waiting until March (which will be autumn) to get our summer clothes, and we can’t send our winter clothes down there a week and a half before we ourselves leave.

But we figured it all out, and we packed the crate, and it’s on its way to a big slow boat.

And then, when we land, we spend a lot of time and money at IKEA and Costco.