When you are in the Foreign Service, the Department of State will help you with all of your stuff. They will ship and/or store a total of 18,000 lbs. So, for example, if you have 10,000 lbs of furniture/clothes/books/art etc. that you want at your post, they will also store up to 8,000 lbs at a warehouse they have in Maryland.
This has lead us to our first question - how much is 18,000 lbs? We honestly had no idea. When we scheduled people to come and pack up our stuff (a.k.a. the pack out), they gave us a rule of thumb of 1,000 per furnished room. We have an 8 room house, plus a basement. It looks like we will be way under our allotment. We can just have everything packed up and we are done.
Well, not so fast. Anytime you move, its an opportunity to reduce the amount of clutter and junk you have. Plus, we don't want to put a lot of things into storage and have it stay there until we retire, and then find ourselves getting rid of it then.
For the past several months we have been trying to rid ourselves of excess stuff. But once I got the offer, we have really pulled out all the stops. We have been giving away, donating or tossing loads of things we simply no longer need. There have been a few things that we are selling because they were expensive, but for the most part, we are just happy if we can give it to someone who can use it.
But we are still keeping plenty. Good furniture, like our bedroom set, we keep. About 1/4 of the books we owned we are going to keep. And of course we are keeping all the mementos we have picked up in our travels.
It has been very liberating every time a big item or car load of things leave the house.
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