Pack Rats

Maybe it's because I grew up in a house where it seemed like we never threw anything away, or maybe it's because I've moved 12 times in the past 10 years of my life, but I can't stand clutter. Two of the past 12 moves have been moves overseas, and if there's one thing that teaches you not to be a pack rat, it's trying to fit everything you own in 2 suitcases, a carry on, and a back pack. There's something so freeing about traveling light, and realizing that all you consider important or 'necessary' can fit into a few bags.

When Bryan and I moved out here a year and a half ago, we splurged and paid the extra fee to get a 3rd check in bag each, and arrived with 6 suitcases and 1 carry-ons luggage and two backpacks (note - the child belongs to the picture taker and it was just easier to leave him in the shot than to move him):
No matter how much I may claim that I don't like clutter, it seems like Bryan and I are pack rats after all...After living here for a year and a half, we somehow managed to accumulate not only furniture, but bedding for 3 rooms and a fully stocked kitchen (thanks to friends who moved back to the US and gave us all their stuff for free!) - including enough twizzlers, popcorn, hot chocolate, pretzels, chocolate chips and baking supplies (among other things) from the US to last us far into the near future (thanks moms, friends, and family for all the fun packages and treats you've sent us!) - basically all you need for a fully stocked home. 18 months later, in the very same living room, here is all the stuff we've acquired in trying to create a home for ourselves abroad:We bought 68 square meters of this thick plastic to wrap our furniture in, with the hope that it would protect our bed, couches, bookshelf, and kitchen trolly from getting dirty or scratched during the move. (There's this place here where you can literally buy ANYTHING you could ever think of, from kitchen sinks to light fixtures to curtains to clothes to bike parts to pots and pans, the list goes on and on...so a couple days before our move we headed there in search of 'something to wrap our furniture in', counting on there being something at this place that would work, and Here's us trying to manage an unwieldy amount of plastic:Paranoid you say? Well you wouldn't say that if you knew how much we were paying to hire a band of 4 locals and a truck for an afternoon to move our stuff across town...$60 US bucks. If you divide that out, you begin to realize that each dude was only getting paid max $15 for hard manual labor for 3 hours, that's $5 bucks/hour. Not bad you say? Well that's not including how much it costs to rent the truck and pay for gas, not to mention how much their company takes off the top before they actually get paid. And actually, before the move, we thought it was going to cost $30 total but we ended up having too much stuff (no surprise there) to fit into one truck and so they had to make two trips, doubling the cost. Considering we thought we were paying a mere $30 to hire movers and a truck for an entire afternoon, we weren't counting on them showing up with blankets or anything at all really to 'protect' our furniture as they moved it...thus the plastic wrap. Now you tell me, wouldn't you do the same?After 3 straight days of packing and plastic wrapping, we settled onto our plastic covered couches for a break of, yep you guessed it, 24 - what can I say, we're obsessed =P