Island Girl
Clothes? Check. Vehicle? Check. Bedding? Shampoo? Check and Check.
You’re lounging on a beach chair, grasping a frozen beverage, while the warm St. Thomas sun brings you dangerously close to a nap. If you stretched your toes out a teensy bit they could dip into the inviting ocean…but at the moment stretching would take too much energy, so you decide to stay as you are – still, save for the slow sips you steal from your colada. It’s moments like these when people think to themselves, “You know, we could move to the islands…I’m sure there’s a way to make it work….“.
Unfortunately, by the time you get home and de-sand everything your mind rushes back to reality and the island life slowly fades away.
Or does it? You may find yourself with a serious case of Island Desire, until you just have to do something about it. Like find a place to live, book a flight and say goodbye to your co-workers. Just like we did. Just like Island Newbie did!
Once we decided to make the dream a reality we started the process of moving – namely, what was coming with us, and what wasn’t. Lucky for us we had great help in this Boston moving company who went over all sorts of options with us, from shipping large containers to sending boxes through the mail. We decided on a 40 ft container and began filling it. And filling it.
And, you know, filling it.
We were moving to a (barely) furnished place, so we raided stores on the mainland for bedding, towels, decorative items – and tossed those into the container. We decided to ship our vehicle instead of buying one on the island – into the container we drove it. We filled up three carriages at Costco with paper products, aspirin, shampoo, Lysol, soaps, bleach, Windex, toothpaste, razors…all into the container. One hot tub, a shiny new tool box with shiny new tools, boxes of summer clothes and bathing suits, cool islandy mugs and other gems from Ebay – all into the container. Our deadline approached, the lovely (and patient) moving company shut the door and our container set sail with all of our stuff.
of course, that didn’t stop us from piling up another four or five boxes of stuff under the following categories: Honey, don’t we want to bring these down? Scott – you forgot this whole drawer! Look what I found at the store, we totally need this down there!
Eventually everything made it to St. Thomas, and found it’s spot in our new home. That Costco trip came in so handy as two years later we’re still dipping into that inventory. Bottom line? Really think about what you need and what you want when you move, they’re two different lists. If you’re shipping boxes make sure you shell out for the tracking just in case. If you’re shipping a container make sure you (or your international moving company) is familiar with the steps you’ll need to take with customs when it reaches the dock, and have someone ready to pick it up and unpack it for you.
The last step? Get back on the lounge chair, order up a colada, put on your shades and find that nap…
I make it sound so easy, right?
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July 1, 2008 @ 8:21 am
RickG Said,
How hard could it be?! I think I would just go insane trying to do the big move. Thanks for the tips.
Cheers, RickG
July 1, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
BBB Said,
So, have you all left Boston for good Nicci? I thought you did the 6/mos. in St. Thomas and 6/mos. in Boston thing. What ever happened to Bridget? Just wondering.
I love your Blog. It makes me want to visit St. Thomas for sure. It just isn’t in our budget though.
Hugs!
BBB
July 2, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
Tripp Torchia Said,
I want to go to Fenway Park!