Moving
For the third time in my life, I am about to make a major international move. The first was relocating from Edinburgh, Scotland to Adelaide, Australia. Planning to be overseas for a couple of years, the stay there eventually extended to 36 years! The second was from Melbourne to Winston Salem in North Carolina, USA. Once again, the visit was to be for a couple of years, and it extended to 10 years. Clearly not good at predicting! Now it’s back from the US to Australia, to Bendigo, a former gold mining town in Victoria. It’s not just three major moves, as I can add in several smaller ones, from Cambridge to Edinburgh, from Adelaide to Melbourne, and some local moves in Victoria. Looking back, what have these experiences taught me?
Can you learn from your mistakes? Well, I’ve made several! In leaving Edinburgh, I left behind some beautiful furniture, including an elegant Queen Anne sideboard a great aunt had given us. When we arrived in Australia, I realised it was valuable, and almost irreplaceable ‘down under’. On the other hand I paid to have some books I’d bought for teaching moved, even though I would never teach courses on those topics again. We also packed a large quantity of children’s pictures and stories from their early school years (and younger); they were still relatively young, and I felt would be treasured in the future. Overall, I think my motivation had been to take as much as I could in order to reinstall my immediate surroundings with what was familiar, and what had links to personal and family history. I found it hard to look around me, dry-eyed and rational, and identify what is often not much more than junk. Will I do better this time?
With most of what is going packed in a container, already on its way, it’s too late to be reviewing some of my choices against experts’ suggestions. Indeed, some of the recommendations in an article by Elena Prokopets – on such matters as picking the best time of the year to move (I should have read this earlier!); the challenges of arranging a rental remotely (not needed); and researching your ‘new home base’ (I’m lucky, my partner had done all that) – are no longer relevant. However, with a second ‘mini move’ about to take place, her comments on what to send and what to abandon are very pertinent. [i] Briefly, among her observations were :
- You own more things than you need
- Prokopets added, “Preparing for the move and going through all the things I had in my household, I was amazed by the amount of absolutely useless stuff I had”
- The key is to get rid of things no longer needed (or planned to move)
- Having identified the likely value of what you are going to abandon, she recommended you offer everything to your friends first
- I’ll come back to that in a moment
- Sell household items and small appliances
- Do the same with un-needed furniture and larger appliances
- Go through clothes and apparel, and be rigorous
- Finally, review what’s left.
For a sometime academic and occasional writer, what is an item that is “absolutely useless”? I have enough trouble determining things that are useless, and as for ‘absolutely’, that’s even harder. However, this isn’t a philosophical issue, it’s practical. Let’s begin.
I did have some things that were patently useless. A portable cassette player. For just a minute, I did hesitate, because we have some recordings on cassette, and might want to hear them again. I could rationalise dumping the cassette player, because it is possible to get a cassette transferred to a CD. Anyway we have an excellent hi-fi system in Australia, one which includes a cassette deck. Wow, one item gone! An old, very early, digital camera. I do enjoy photography, and I have three other, more recent, cameras, but this one has sentimental value. Will I ever use it? No. Am I about to start a museum? No. I guess it is time to let it go, but … maybe not just yet? However, mention of museum pieces reminds me I have a 100 year old manual calculator (it was my father’s). I’m keeping that, even though I’ve never used it for calculations! It’s in the category of so-called family heirlooms, together with other emotionally important items like the small bronze head of Parvati, an Indian mother goddess, that had belonged to my grandfather.
That was easy. Time to turn to my most demanding category, books. I have been slimming my library over the years, but I still had some 3,000+ books in the USA, and another 500 or so in Australia. We’d done a little further weeding in Australia when we were there two years ago, but now I had to confront the books around me. I work in a study, surrounded by bookcases. My books are organised, by categories, and within categories by author. Is this evidence of some kind of underlying obsessive-compulsive disorder? Is such a personality likely to be more of a hoarder? Quickly skipping past those distracting thoughts, let me get back to the books.
Around 100 books are biographies. Will I read them again? A few, but most I won’t, and if I need to find out more today, I can use Wikipedia or borrow a book from the local library. Most can be donated. A much larger category is novels. I should have been using the local library much earlier, as I have around 700. There are a few I’ll keep, maybe 50, ones I like to read and reread. All the others can go: easy to say, however, because I keep checking the remainder, “but will I want to read this again?’. I tell myself to be firm. A significant number of books, perhaps 800, are from my life as a teacher, books on management, organisations, social psychology, education and allied fields. I still do a little teaching, but now I rely on online articles and a very small number of texts. Just about every book in this category can go. So far, I’m going well.
It’s time to turn to categories I’ll keep. Obviously there are reference books, dictionaries, books on English language usage, and various forms of overviews: I still want those, and most of my small collection of history books, together a total of 150 items. I will get rid of a few. Books on travel, books from places we’ve visited? Some to be kept, but most are out of date; in fact, quite a few are ‘absolutely useless’: 100 to keep and 100 to go: I’m approaching the end of this task.
There are some 300 or so books on philosophy, politics and economics, a much used resource. Not useless, I’m keeping those, as well as others on science, the history and philosophy of science, and a few on ornithology and geology. Almost there. There’s a random selection of other non-fiction books I love: I’ll keep most that 100. Finally there are a large number of ‘miscellaneous books’, odd items given, some bought, some very old, many of them paperbacks, and it’s time for 400 to be donated. I believe I have shrunk my library to a more modest collection, around 1,100. Not bad. I make it sound so easy and logical, but I already know that at some point in the future I will reach around from my desk for a book, it won’t be there, and I’ll be cross with myself. Not just cross because it isn’t there, but because I can remember why I bought it, even when and where, and what it had mattered to me at the time. I can’t hide from knowing that my books are, in some ways, an extension of myself. Saying that reminds me there was another collection of books here, my partner’s work books, mainly on art and music. She’s already in Australia, and they’re on their way for her to sort out and review – not me!
The next item on Elena Prokopets’ list concerned furniture, kitchen items and appliances. Since most of what is going is being sent in a container, we’ve room for most of our furniture, most of our crockery, cutlery, utensils, pots, pans and similar items, but electrical goods will have to stay in the US: incompatible voltage systems! In her suggestions, Elena Prokopets advised selling what isn’t going, and offering items to friends first. For books, those electrical items and some art works, offering them to friends was easy, and I dismissed the idea of selling any of them. If I see books and other items going to a good home, I’m happy to pass them on. As for Prokopet’s last topic, clothes, they’re easy, too. Moving is a great time to do a massive clean out when it comes to clothes. I know some people find it hard to part with much loved items, but apart from tweed jackets and woollen cardigans, I don’t have a sentimental attachments to many clothes!
Her article goes on to make some very good points about being organised and keeping lists. I suspect I am not the only person who finds it hard to be overly organised and confident. I think that’s because moving always sees some moments when unexpected demands occur, or where scheduling creates what seem like insurmountable problems. I learnt about unexpected demands – well, not so much unexpected as unbelievable – when preparing to leave from Edinburgh.
I’d first thought we would be going to Canada, but the job I was offered was cancelled , the result of a reduced provincial budget. Then I managed to score a position in New Zealand. Hard to believe, but next I was offered a better position in Australia. If I was flexible in my thinking, I think my family was bewildered. As for sending our possessions overseas, after all these changes the international moving company was both confused and very dubious about what was going on. They almost gave up, and wanted to send them to a location somewhere between New Zealand and Melbourne: given the geography involved, this could have been in the middle of the Trans-Tasman Sea!! They chose Sydney, where we weren’t going, and I wouldn’t have known this, except I had left our passports in a filing cabinet, in store, waiting to be shipped. Retrieving the passports, I noticed the shipping instructions, and quickly made certain they were going to the correct city. I suppose I should have admired the contingency planning the moving team adopted, but at the time I just breathed a sigh of relief that everything was squared away.
I learnt a lot back then, especially about flexibility. Our complicated journey to Australia saw us arrive in Cairo after the first few stops. There, we suddenly faced a challenge. A civil war had broken out in Lebanon and we had to change our travel plans. After some discussion we decided to go to Baghdad. Arriving in Baghdad, I discovered we had chosen to visit Baghdad at the same time as an international dentistry convention in the city, and not a single hotel room was vacant. We were stuck, waiting for a flight out, and spent two nights sleeping at the airport. Eventually, travel plans amended, we moved on. All the while, somewhere on the oceans our goods were making their way over. I did wonder if they would get there before we did. They didn’t!
Flexibility is crucial, although some people prefer to express this as: ‘whatever can go wrong will go wrong’. That might be a little too pessimistic, but it is wise to plan for contingencies. In the past, I would always make photocopies of all travel documents, and make sure one set is in my luggage, and one in a carry-on bag. Now, I also store the itinerary and photographs of key documents on my mobile phone and iPad. Excessive? I don’t think so. New technologies help. You can store key information in Dropbox, and make sure photographs are immediately uploaded to the ‘Cloud’. I wish that had been the case years ago. Once visiting Disneyland with three children, our camera fell into a pool, and with it went a record of several visits, children’s highlights and special family moments!
Many years later, the second international move was from Australia to the US. Getting ready to go, we were lucky, as the moving company brought a container to our house. Lucky because, as turned out to be the case, if it was packed with what was planned to go and there was space left over, we could add in a few more items. As a result and at the last minute we added in some garden chairs! Did experience from the previous exercise help? Was I like Elena Prokopets, wiser now, with a checklist of do’s and don’ts? Not as much as I might have hoped.
My limitations were exposed by failing to identify things that were ‘absolutely useless’ or, at least, ‘no longer needed’. What is ‘no longer needed’? Here a familiar issue is to do with those things you’re keeping for another person, akachildren! In this case, how about taking that large collection of children’s pictures, schoolbooks, and other treasured material from their early years. Treasured? Most of it might have been treasured by the children in question, and, if I had thought about it, I should have passed it on to them. Instead, it was all boxed, packed and sent; it arrived in the US, where it remained boxed, and untouched, waiting to be returned, or to be passed on to the children in question on some future date. It’s been a kind of ballast, weighing us down, but there in case we needed it. On that move there was another problem, wine! Import regulations to North Carolina dictated than any more than one dozen bottles would be charged as imported alcohol for sale, and a hefty tax applied. We had a lot of wine, and when we left for the US, our friends were happy to have acquired some (often rather good) bottles.
No amount of experience can change one thing. Moving internationally, especially going somewhere entirely unfamiliar is a curious mixture of excitement and worry. The excitement always wins out, but there are checkpoints at immigration and customs, quarantine requirements, moving schedules and documentation, and, to add to concerns, news stories about containers falling off a ship, and cancelled flights, all designed to ensure anxieties have their place. Here we are, moving a household again, and as I am typing, I get advice our container has left port. How long will it be before it gets to Melbourne? I rather liked the timescale I was given. It was in three parts: there was a date for arrival; there was a warning with a longer timescale, “85-105 days”; and a final statement, “but no guarantees”. Here’s where experience does help: after a few moves, and a couple of long international transfers, you learn there’s nothing you can do about what happens. Sit back, enjoy the journey, and look forward to new experiences.
When I arrive in Bendigo, will I discover I had brought over things I didn’t need? Certainly. Will there be items I should have brought? Certainly. Will I conclude our moving plans were mistaken, crazy or brilliant? Impossible to anticipate. At the end of Elena Prokopets’ article, she says “Living abroad is an incredible experience, so when the opportunity comes your way, grab it!” I agree with her comment, and to make it true I just have to convince myself we are not ‘returning’, but going abroad: after all Melbourne will be a couple of hours down the road!
[i] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/6-things-i-have-learned-from-moving-internationally_b_8488080
