Your life, in 6 suitcases or less

Usually, when you move, at least in the States where my family moved several times when we all lived under one roof, you hire a big ole moving truck, enlist the help of friends and family, or possibly even hire an actual packing and moving company.  You pack up boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, load it all up, and then make the drive to the new home, whether it's in the next neighborhood, city or state.  And you probably spend the next few weeks, if not months (hopefully not years!) unpacking and settling in to your new home.

This is decidedly NOT the case when you live as an international school teacher!  Often schools offer a displacement allowance, and sometimes a leaving allowance.  This amount of money is a very useful bonus, but, would hardly be enough to move an entire household overseas.

When I was 23, and headed to my first job overseas, I was single, just graduated from university, the ink on my teaching degree still wet.  I moved to China with two suitcases.  My whole life fit in two suitcases.  Ok yes, I left quite a few boxes in my parent's basement (oops, yeah, they are still there).  But everything that I really NEEDED fit in two suitcases.  Very full suitcases, but just two suitcases.  When I left China, I moved from China to Latvia.  I sent two, maybe three boxes via mail to Latvia, and again, moved the rest of my life in 2 suitcases.

When my husband, Joel, and I moved from Latvia to Angola, we moved in 4 suitcases.  Mind you, when we left Latvia, we left a combined 16 boxes in the attic of our sister-in-law's country house. (By the way, Mook, this summer, we plan to check out those boxes, pare them down, get rid of a lot, and send what we really want to save on to a new home.)  But, again, we had to take the really important stuff in 4 suitcases. (Can I just add here, that my Kindle is a LIFE SAVER on this count.  For a book lover like me, it is wonderful to not have to take up quite so much baggage space with books, but still be able to have my books with me!)

I spent the last 4 months of my pregnancy, and the first three months of my daughter's life living in the United States, and in August when we came back to Angola as a family, we did it in 6 suitcases.

Now we're moving from Angola to Laos, and we're not going directly. We're going via the US and Latvia only ending up in Laos after months of traveling.  Also, since we're flying through Europe, many of our baggage allowances are smaller- only one bag per person, not two.  So we've hit the point again of trying to figure out how to fit our lives into 6 suitcases or less.

But the thing is, after a while, fitting your life in 6 suitcases makes you feel like a perpetual college student.  You can't save nice things- knowing that you won't be able to hold on to them, you don't buy them...you live with photos of your friends and family stuck to the fridge, or sticky-tacked to the wall.  Your home is somewhat bare, because, vases and decorative pillows and area rugs are all things that you can't fit when you have only 6 suitcases!  The truth is, it gets old. 

At this point, fitting our whole life into 6 suitcases isn't possible anymore.  We already sent 5 boxes by mail in December.  We'll send more in April.  We'll definitely use up our moving allowance this year!

Having to fit your life into 6 suitcases or less really makes you think about what you need; what is important.  Even when you have 6 suitcases and 10 or so boxes being sent by mail, you really have to think about it.  Right now, this is the first time when things like photo albums, framed photos for the walls of our family, and knick-knacks have made the cut to be included.  The truth is, that before, it just hasn't been worth the hassle of packing things like that up, of having to worry about shipping (and worry whether or not your stuff will ever reach the other end, and if it'll be intact when it gets there- or if it will be broken, robbed, etc).  But we've got things behind us now... a wedding, a birth, almost an entire year of our baby's life... and with these events come gifts, mementos, keepsakes- things you don't want to let go of.

And so here we are, for the first time, busting through the confines of 6 suitcases or less.  We're keeping more stuff, and paying for it along the way.  The good news about it is, that it'll make turning our next house into a home much easier.   When we are able to put out our wedding and baby pictures, hang the tapestry we bought in Zambia, use the bowls we acquired in Turkey, and display the candlesticks and figurines from our wedding...all of these things will make us feel at home.  When you move from place to place every few years, when you're trying to find your footing in a new country and culture, sometimes having your life defined by the contents of 6 suitcases or less is hard.  They say home is where the heart is, but our stuff does make a difference too.



I'll have to let you know what our final count comes down to for this move.  How many suitcases and how many boxes will it take?