Moving across an ocean is hard

Moving is terrible. When we moved into our Annapolis house in 2022, we thought we were done with moving. We were ready to calcify right where we were. Of course, life had a different plan.

Moving across an ocean is a very different thing from any move we’ve done before. First, we have lots of possessions that just don’t make sense over there. Mattresses are different sizes, so beds don’t go. Plugs are different, so anything electrical might as well be replaced. Stoves are induction, so any aluminum pot or pan just won’t get hot. Annapolis-appropriate clothes are often not Trondheim-appropriate, either because they’re insufficiently rugged and waterproof, too formal, or just not worn there.

Second, we don’t actually have a house over there yet. We’re moving into a furnished apartment for up to a year while we look for a house, so there’s no delivery address.

Fortunately, third, we have plenty of time because the logistics of moving things to Europe is crazy. Things go from our house into a truck. The truck goes to New Jersey. Our things are offloaded into a warehouse. When they can be combined with another person’s things to fill a shipping container, the container is filled and put on a boat to Rotterdam. When it arrives in Rotterdam, it is, best case scenario, two months after it was first loaded onto the truck. Assuming we don’t have a house yet, it sits in the Rotterdam port until we ask for it. At that point, it goes on a truck, which is driven to Trondheim (another step that I can’t imagine will happen with any alacrity).

Early on, I asked Gemini to look through ikea.no and calculate how much it would cost to fill a 3-bedroom house with furniture from the nice end of Norwegian IKEA – its answer was about $13,000. Moving all our furniture would be much more than that, and not knowing what our house is, who knows if it would fit. So the takeaway here is “moving” has looked a whole lot less like “moving our possessions to another place,” and whole lot more like “selling everything we own.”

So, what’s moving? Some clothes. A dining room table we like a lot. Kitchen things that work with the plugs and stoves (for example, spoons). One tool bag of hand tools. Annalise’s strategic reserve of Brio train tracks. A hand-painted rocking chair with Annalise’s name on it. Probably too much art. A selection of Christmas ornaments. And that’s kind of it! It has to be packed by the movers, or customs has to open everything to make sure it’s not made of cocaine. This is more expensive, but since it’s not a choice, I don’t have to feel guilty about it.

To make it clear to the movers what’s going on the ship and what’s not (either because we’re getting rid of it or because it’s going in our checked luggage), we’ve run around marking the house up with blue tape, with tape meaning “don’t take what’s in here.”

So where does everything else go? Well, first it goes on Facebook Marketplace, where we have had a slow-rolling two-month-long garage sale which has honestly become one of the main things I do with my life (Annapolis people! Look me up on Facebook! Buy my Shop-Vac!). If nobody bites there, the local Buy Nothing group usually cleans it up.

For everything else we’re actively using, we have an extensive spreadsheet of things claimed by friends that they can pick up in the final week. And, we’re in the middle of an intense couple days of people coming in the following order:

• Movers
• Consignment shop
• Donation pickup
• Junk removal

After that, the house has to be empty. There are a lot of emotions related to this move, but I’m not upset about this purge. There are a couple things I have a pang about letting go of, but overall, this reinforces a life philosophy that “stuff” is a scam.

So, my advice: sell your stuff! But only after buying mine!