Moving Internationally 2010 - How it went down

Now that we'll be doing the international move in reverse, I thought I'd review my old blog posts to see how it really happened to refresh my memory. The moving company did a pretty good job of explaining everything, but not everything went down as planned.

The ship with our container didn't go directly from Seattle to Sydney as scheduled. For some reason, it stopped in Singapore and everything was delayed for three weeks while awaiting a connecting vessel. That meant we went from being without our stuff for 7 weeks to being without our stuff for 10 weeks.

Below is the move timeline, and at the bottom is a little "Lessons Learned" section! :)

30 September 2010
Shipment delivered to our apartment; first night sleeping in our own bed in 2.5 months.

15 September 2010
Our container arrived at Sydney Port on 15 September, and  the Port set the date of 18 September for Crown Relocation to collect the container in preparation for Quarantine inspection.

9 September 2010
Rental furniture delivered. The relocation company provided us with "furniture hire" because our shipment was inexplicably delayed by 3 weeks. They dropped off a bed with sheets and pillows, a loveseat, a coffee table, a few lamps, and box of kitchen goods. After I unpacked the boxes with the linens and kitchen stuff, I realized they forgot to give us the bath towels and all they included in the kitchen box was dishes - they didn't provide the basic kitchen supplies set with pots and pans, etc. So, still more eating out for us for a few more days!

8 September 2010
Picked up keys to our new apartment.

3 September 2010
Signed the lease on our new apartment.

25 August 2010
We inquired about our shipping container with all our worldly possessions, which was to have arrived in Sydney on 21 August. We were advised today that it is still in Singapore, awaiting a connecting vessel. (It was never supposed to go to Singapore, it was originally scheduled to go directly from Seattle to Sydney.)
Its revised estimated arrival date in Sydney is 13 September, making it 3 weeks late. Add onto that another 10 to 14 business days for our shipment to clear Australian Customs and Quarantine, and we may not be seeing our furniture and the rest of our clothes, etc until 27 September.
Our furnished corporate apartment only lasts 30 days, and the lease on any housing we've been looking at may not be able to be held off until the last week of September.

Tue 17 August 2010
We arrived safely at about 6:05 am. Going through Australian Customs and Quarantine was pretty quick - we were done by about 6:45 am.
Our wonderful friends Mark and Jennifer picked us up at the airport with a van for all our luggage, and drove us to our our hotel/furnished apartment in the CBD.

Sunday 15 August 2010
Woke up, deflated our Aerobed, and began the process of cramming all our clothes and things into our suitcases and small footlocker. It was stressful, but we got it all in!

12:30 pm: Our wonderful friends Tamara and Andy arrived in 2 cars to take us and our luggage to the airport. We checked 5 bags (including the footlocker), and had 2 carry-on items each. Luckily, M was Premier Executive with United Airlines, so we didn't have to pay any fees for that amount of luggage.

2:50 pm: flight from Portland to L.A.

5:00 pm: arrive LAX and had lunch/dinner before settling into the United Red Carpet Club lounge in LAX.

6:30ish: 2 comfy chairs, 2 laptops, 1 Ipod with a headphones splitter so we could share the music. We were provided only 1 complimentary wifi connection for the lounge, but M figured out how to share because he's smart and brought a network cable.

10:30pm departure for 14.5 hour flight from LAX to Sydney! We leave the USA at 10:30 on Sunday night and arrive in Sydney at 6:10 am on Tuesday!

Saturday 14 August 2010
Bon Voyage party at Weir Haus.

Sunday 1 August 2010
Moving Sale - got rid of almost all electric devices, except computery stuff that can switch voltages.

July 28 2010
We were notified that our 457 visas for Australia were approved, and we were finally able to book our flight! We leave for Sydney on August 15.

22 July 2010
The movers were at our house Thursday July 22 to pack and load everything we were taking to Australia into the 20-foot shipping container. Four guys arrived at 8:30 am, and they were all done by 4 pm! In the end, the container was only half-full, and it only took them one day. (They'd allowed for packing on Thu & Fri, but only needed Thursday.)
The shipping container AKA "the can" then goes from Portland to Seattle, and leaves on a ship out of the Port of Seattle on 31 July. It will arrive in Sydney on 21 August and then has to clear Australia Customs & Quarantine. We won't see our stuff until at least 9 September.
Note: we were sleeping on an Aerobed from 22 July until our departure on 15 August.

A Few Lessons Learned
Make the night before and day of departure easier for yourself.
It wasn't our greatest idea to have the going away party the night before we flew out. Waking up with a hangover and trying to cram everything into our suitcases was slightly unpleasant, but oh well! :P

Also in retrospect, I wouldn't have slept on the Aerobed in our house the night before we flew out. Would have been better to spring for a hotel room to reduce the stress of having to clear out every last item from the house before we flew out that day.

Don't leave lots of rubbish, and cleaning out the fridge, until right before you leave. 
How did we end up with so many condiments, and why did we leave cleaning out our fridge until the day before (or maybe it was the day before the day before) we left? I have a memory of standing at the kitchen sink dumping ketchup etc and frantically washing out the containers for the recycling, all while thinking of 100 other things I needed to be doing instead! I think we thought we would still be cooking at home til the end, but in reality, we were so tired from endless errands, house painting, etc, and having last dinners out with friends, that we didn't cook much that last week anyway.

Also, by the time we left, our garbage and recycling bins were overflowing. We should have been getting rid of more of our trash and recycling in the few weeks before our departure.

Don't be afraid to ask for help.
I remember the task list was endless. So many errands, so little time. One day, I sent out a frantic email to friends asking them to please help us by dropping stuff off at the Post Office, yet another trip to Goodwill, yet another trip to the Dump. Our lovely friends responded, and we were so grateful.

Don't allow clutter to accumulate in your basement.
How did we end up with a basement so full of styrofoam blocks and old packing peanuts? We had original boxes with styrofoam inside for appliances we hadn't owned in years! It took us half a day just to load up almost an entire van's worth and then drive out to the recycling center on the far side of town (as curbside recycling wouldn't take styrofoam). I'm glad we did it rather than chuck it all in the trash (and it wouldn't have all fit in our trash anyway), but that certainly took heaps longer than we expected!