Day 38: How To Determine What To Take With You, What To Leave Behind, And What To Get Rid Of Altogether

Dear 40 Days To Your New Life In Europe Student,

You’ve determined which overseas haven just might have your name on it…

You’ve begun your research into the three most critical issues you need to address as you prepare for your move—residency options, taxes, and health insurance…

The next step is to figure out what to do with all your stuff. What should you take with you? What should you keep but leave behind? And what should you get rid of altogether?

When we made our first move overseas way back in the late 90s, from Baltimore, Maryland, to Waterford, Ireland, we were figuring things out as we went along. Our first mistake was shipping a houseful of Baltimore antiques to Waterford with us. We later discovered that we could have bought nicer antiques in Ireland for about half as much as we’d paid to ship the lesser-quality pieces across the Atlantic Ocean. It would have been easier, cheaper, and more fun to buy all-new old stuff in Waterford.

The second mistake was overestimating what we’d “need” upon arrival. We wanted to make our rented house in Waterford as homey as possible, right from the start, so we arranged for Mail Boxes Etc. (now the UPS Store) to collect, pack, and deliver our daughter Kaitlin’s favorite games and toys, our everyday kitchen gear, photos, knickknacks, and keepsakes, as well as four boxes of books.

In all, we shipped a dozen boxes with Mail Boxes Etc. On the one hand, these essential items were waiting for us when we arrived at the little house on the river that would be our home our first year in Ireland. On the other hand, it was a great deal of money spent, frankly, for little reason. We could have replaced most of the stuff locally, easily, and affordably.

To find an international shipper back then, we consulted the Yellow Pages. We called at least a dozen firms listed. Some never returned the call… some didn’t ship to Ireland. After days of back and forth, we arranged for representatives of three firms to visit and give us estimates for packing, shipping, delivering to Waterford, and unpacking in our new home. Two weeks later, we had cost quotes. More phone calls, more follow-up, and, finally, we settled on a group headquartered in the U.K. A lot of hassle to ship a bunch of stuff that we could have lived without and that, again, we could easily have replaced in Ireland. We swore we’d never do it again.

Seven years later, we were back on the phone, this time shopping for an international shipper who’d take the Waterford household stuff to Paris. This was rationalized because we couldn’t have replaced the Irish antiques in Paris… “But I promise, dear, this will be the last time we’ll mess with this.”

Then, in 2008, as we prepared for our move from France to Panama, we wondered again how we’d furnish our new home in this new country. Over the years, we’d bought, renovated, and furnished an old building in Panama City’s old town, Casco Viejo, as well as a preconstruction apartment downtown. Those experiences had taught us that, while you can buy antique furniture and good-quality reproductions in Panama, the supply is limited, and the prices are high.

Living in Waterford, we’d gotten to know the local antiques dealer. The month before our move to Panama, we visited Ireland and stopped in to see our friend Rody at his Waterford City Auction Rooms. We were greeted at the door by a sign proclaiming that Rody was planning an auction that very evening. Serendipity.

We’d buy furniture for the new place in Panama from Rody in Ireland! We’d come out ahead, even allowing for international shipping. Our Paris apartment furniture stayed in our Paris apartment, which we have since rented out to a nice American university professor and his wife. Keepsakes and things we didn’t want to risk those renters breaking went into paid storage.

When we walked out the door of our apartment on the rue de Verneuil three years ago bound for Panama, we carried only two suitcases of clothes each, a couple of duffel bags of toys and books, and our laptops. The furniture from Rody arrived in Panama, without incident, a month later. We paid no Panama import duty thanks to our residency status.

At the time we swore this would be our final international shipping adventure. The truth is, though, we’d do it again.

For one thing, it’s ever-easier to manage an international move. This most recent Ireland to Panama experience was a cake walk compared with the original one from Baltimore to Waterford.

The first and most important step is thinking through (more objectively than we did for our first move) what you need to take with you, what you want to ship for immediate delivery, what you want to keep but leave behind, and whether or not you want to invest in shipping a full container-load of stuff.

For some people, this process is no more than another item on their retire-overseas checklist. For others, it’s a serious psychological stumbling block.

Our friend Lucy, for example, really struggled with the question of what to do with all her family’s things. As she explained, “When we first decided to pack up our home in Spain and take a working ‘sabbatical,’ journeying through Mexico, Central America, the United States, and Europe, my biggest mental block was what to do with our houseful of belongings. At first I resisted selling anything but defunct objects and dusty, unused baby equipment. Then we took the time to figure out the costs of storage and transportation for things like china, kitchen equipment, and furniture. It was going to be cheaper to replace most things than to ship everything and have it waiting for us in an expensive storage facility. Besides, when we set out, we didn’t know where we were going to settle!

“I thought it would be impossible to choose what was important,” Lucy continued, “but then I came up with some ‘benchmarks.’ First, did an item have lasting memories? The kind that make your hairs stand on end or bring a smile to your face. Second, could I replace it without having to travel around the world again to a remote island? Finally, did it have thick dust on it? You and your partner may have different ideas about what is important. For instance, our beautiful blue Andalusian bowls were not on my husband’s list, but they were on mine. And it wasn’t only because they’re pretty. It was also because, when I look at them, I see clearly the ceramics workshop where I bought them. I remember the smell of the mountains of the Alpujarras in southern Spain. And I recall how, during the negotiations for their acquisition, the old man I bought them from turned mid-haggle to relieve himself in the most beautiful bowl in his courtyard! That’s a memory worth keeping.”

Lucy used her benchmarks to determine that all of her everyday china could be sold, with the exception of the blue bowls from Andalusia, the antique jugs from England, and the hand-blown glasses from an anniversary trip to Napa. “Out went our off-the-rack mountain bikes, but I held on tight to my custom-made road bike,” Lucy explained. “The children sold their toys that had dust on them or were no longer trendy, but they kept the currently in-use and much-loved ones. We sold virtually all our furniture. Not a big deal for us because we didn’t have any antiques. We sold nearly all the kitchen gadgets, but I kept my grandmother’s potato masher. Rugs that were bought in a chain store… sold. Rug from a swap with a Sarawakian indigenous Indian… very definitely kept and stored. And so on. Now that we have settled in our new home and unpacked the treasures, do I miss anything? No.

“Well, okay, occasionally I think that it would be handy to have such-and-such a utensil, but I’ve yet to have any gut-wrenching moments of regret about not keeping anything in particular. That’s because I stuck to my benchmarks, even when I was being cajoled into loosening my grip on a few things. I stuck to them, because I didn’t want any regrets in my new life.”

Like us, Lucy also realized that sometimes you can buy better locally in your new home. After settling in France, she bought a new and improved mountain bike for only 50 euros more than she’d sold her previous American one for—much less than the cost of storage or shipping.

On the other hand, our perpetual-traveler friends Paul and Vicki have downsized completely. They travel the world continuously with but a few suitcases and a couple of laptops. They worry not about shipping furniture or storing heirlooms. The freedom is enviable… but could you really stomach it?

We have designated Paris as a kind of home base. Packed away there in paid storage are family photo albums and our children’s christening outfits, our son’s first-grade report card and daughter’s high-school art portfolio, grandmother’s recipe files and the bedspread embroidered for Lief and me when we were married. Because we can’t let these things go, as we move around the world, we have to factor in the cost of storing them. Unless you’re ready to part with all your worldly possessions, you will, too.

Furthermore, fortunately, again, international shipping is far more easily accomplished today than it was years ago when we arranged for our first trans-Atlantic container.

In fact, it can be as simple as this:

Go to the International Movers website (www.intlmovers.com). Type in the details of what you’d like to have shipped from where to where, then sit back and wait for estimates from international shipping firms interested in the gig. This online brokerage service is how we found the company that delivered our container-load of furniture to Panama, and we heartily recommend it.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe you don’t want or need to ship an entire container-load of furniture and belongings to your new home. In some cases it doesn’t make sense to undertake that investment. Start by thinking through (as objectively as possible, using a system of “benchmarks,” as Lucy described) what you need to take with you (on the plane), what you want to ship for immediate delivery, and then whether or not it makes sense in fact to invest in shipping a full container-load of stuff. One key to making these decisions is knowing what you’ll be able to replace easily in your new country of residence and at what cost.

The UPS Store is probably still the best choice for shipping things you want waiting for you upon your arrival.

Here are other things we’ve learned:

1. You don’t want to ship appliances or electronics that plug into the wall. A U.S. hairdryer, for example, won’t work (without a transformer) in European countries. However, an Apple TV, Firestick, or other kind of television plugin is good to come with you.
2. Beds are complicated. In Ireland, for example, they don’t have twin or queen-sized beds. They have three-foot-, five-foot-, and six-foot-wide beds. In France, you find 90-, 140-, and 160-centimeter beds. American twin-sized sheets don’t quite fit an Irish three-foot bed. A five-foot Irish mattress will not fit in an American queen-sized bed (trust us on this). The safe and sensible thing is to buy beds and bedding when you arrive in your new country of residence.
3. If you ship a container, buy the insurance. The mirror-fronted door of our 200-year-old armoire slid from the unpacker’s hands smack onto the cobblestones of the courtyard upon delivery in Paris… then that same unpacker banged one table into another, chipping away the carved rosewood edge. Luckily, the repairs to both pieces were covered by the insurance we’d opted for.
4. Your exemption from import duty (a benefit of most permanent residency visas) is most easily processed if you ship everything in one go.
5. Note that, thanks to ever more restrictive airline luggage restrictions, it’s more challenging today than ever to carry much more than clothing with you on the plane.
6. Research what you won’t be able to replace in your new locale. Things like your favorite over-the-counter drugs are unlikely to be available in your new country, so bring a stash with you.
7. Your thinking about what to take with you, what to leave behind, and what to sell off or give away is less straightforward if you’re moving with children. This was the reason we invested in having Mailboxes Etc. ship boxes full of toys, books, knickknacks, and keepsakes from Baltimore to Waterford—because we wanted our then 8-year-old daughter to feel as comfortable as possible in her new foreign home.

In addition to your personal and household belongings, you have two other big possessions to figure out what to do with—your home (if you own one) and your car…