Ship Away!

How much household can you fit in a 20-foot-container? I know now. But if you have all your belongings packed an piled up in your apartment it is just so hard to say. But for exactly that reason that question had spun around the mind of my brother's for weeks now. He'd been packing his and his family's stuff and had no idea of how much he'd be able to fit in the overseas container. And now, the day of truth had come, the container was to be packed today.

To make things worse, my brother had undergone an operation on the leg that forced him to rest it frequently and not put stress on it. Not a good precondition for packing a whole container, but rather impossible for him. And even worse, we were tired and exhausted from the day before, when we had moved the remainder of my furniture out of my room, had organized about a thousand little details that come with people leaving a country. Finally I had fallen asleep on my brother's couch while he and his wife where still packing boxes. Usually I have a hard time going to sleep, especially with a lot of noise present. But there, intending just to rest for a few minutes, I was just knocked out instantly and wouldn't wake until hours later just to crawl under a blanket and continue sleeping. But, since I had just exchanged my bed for an air mattress, the couch was not a bad option. Still, sleeping didn't help so much and my brother and I, we both were still quite exhausted and tired the next morning with so much still to be done, before the container would arrive early afternoon. Not a good precondition either.

I cannot recall all the things we did in the morning, but I found myself tearing out cables for the spot lighting in the hall, taking apart kitchen furniture to unplug the oven and building wooden shipping boxes for some of the large canvas picture frames that had to go into the container. And actually, it didnt seem that much time had passed, but soon enough the truck driver stood in the room and we were still far from having everything prepared. My brother trusted me to arrange all pieces into the container so they would not break on the long sea trip to thailand. As soon as his leg, already stressed from almost two days work, started to give him trouble I found myself being the one responsible for the good packing of my brothers goods.

We were quick. With everyone helping and carrying everything to the container doors I was the one who couldn't quite follow. Our truck driver filled in the gap and helped me in the container, even though it was not his job. Thank him and his experience, we did a good job, I hope. We piled the boxes to under the roof, but when we came to have the container about half filled, we realized there would not be enough to fill the whole thing. We were surprised. My brother and his wife were almost angry. If they would just have known, they would have taken more with them. Now it was too late. Only three hours to pack the container didn't allow to organize any more goods to take along. So we built a wall using the couches and tall furniture and fixed these so nothing in the container could fall over or move in any other way. Now we just pray, all fixtures will hold...

Then, everything was gone. The truck disappeared in the distance and we returned to the empty apartment. Everyone was tired, but we'd done a great job. We sat down in the middle of the room on the floor and had drinks. Some left to find rest, the others went on chatting and drinking to make for a good after packing party.