Packing up

There is a distinct difference between the way my husband, Mr H, and I do things.  As soon as I have something to organise, I like to break down what needs doing to achieve this and make a list.  Or in this case lots of lists.  And I like to start working through the list straight away.  This drives Mr H mad.  Mr H is more of the 'it can wait until tomorrow' mentality.  Generally, we balance each other out.  Sometimes we just don't get everything done.

For our wedding, we found that using a 'Kanban' (used in Agile software development) was an effective way to manage our list of tasks.  We tried the same for our move to Manila.  Broadly, it worked - there are a number of tasks in the 'DONE' column.  But I'm sure it won't escape you that there are still things in the 'TO DO' and 'IN PROGRESS' columns.  It was all about priorities.  Some things absolutely had to be done before we flew, other things could wait.

The number of tasks is one thing.  The size of each individual task is another.  I think it's fair to say that neither of us realised just how long it would take to pack up the house into storage.  What we hadn't factored in was that there would be so many decisions to make along the way.  Will I need this item in Manila?  Will I need it immediately, or can I ship it to be there in 3 months?  Will I need this item at all?

So in the days between 30 December and 6 January we made umpteen trips from our flat to the storage unit; re-arranged it countless times and finally managed to fit EVERYTHING in.  I hope there's nothing we need from the back corner.

If we did this again, we would make sure that we had more than enough boxes, and that they are all proportionate dimensions to each other.  As you can see, there are lots of things which didn't fit into boxes and a number of things quite precariously stacked.  All the more fun for when we need to move it out of storage then!

So by 2:30pm on Sunday 6th January, we were ready to go.  Phew.  The weeks and months prior to this date had been intense with all the admin and other tasks we had to do for the move, as well as Christmas and trying to see as many friends and family as possible, that it was a relief to know we had 15 or so hours where we didn't have to do a thing.