House photos/update – where to begin. Our house has not changed in the 10 years we have been living in Asia. Terri and Andy moved in two and half years ago while they remodeled their home. They hit a few problems so it took longer than expected. Terri and Andy moved stuff to storage and stuff into our house.

This is Terri and Andy’s stuff piled in various rooms…

Our 40 foot bin in the back yard has been holding wood Ernie’s company salvaged out of homes from Hamilton Air Force Base. As we were finding contractors for the job, it was time to determine if the wood would be used for the house. If the contracts thought they could work with the old wood, we would use the wood and save a few dollars not buying new wood. If not, we would need to find a new home for all this wood. Lucky for us, our floor contractor said it would be no problem.

Along with the wood, other “stuff/junk” had piled up in the bin. Jim borrowed the neighbors, Jim and Barbara, truck for a dump run. Karla said it looked like the Grinch sled loaded to the top.

As Andy was moving their stuff out, I was packing our stuff. I have determine we have too much stuff. Packing the house was painful. I came back from Nebraska a week before the girls to work on the packing. My goal was to have the house packed before Jim arrived, but that didn’t happened! Nancy and Kathy helped me pack the kitchen in one afternoon – it would have taken me so much longer on my own.

I would pack the boxes and pile them in the parlor for Jim to move to the attic. The goal is to get boxes in the attic and furniture in the bin.

As I was packing the house, Eleri was tried of the mess. So she created her clean space…which lasted about a day.

The trick of the move is that all the furniture needs to go out of the house THEN all the wood in the bin can come in house. Once the wood is out, the furniture can go in the bin.

When we started this project 15 years ago, there were no storage pods. I calculated it took 18 months of rental to cover the cost of buying the 40 foot bin. That was an easy decision as we knew it would be longer than 18 months the first time we put all our furniture in the bin in 1994. The difference is that we put EVERYTHING we own in the bin at that time. This time, we are filling the attic and the bin.

The furniture came out to sit on the lawn. Good thing it doesn’t rain in California in the summer…most times! Jim hired Mimi’s handy man, Samuel, to help him move the furniture out.

The yard look like a furniture sale.

Then, the wood came in. Jim and Samuel moved all the wood into various rooms around the house, including upstairs.

The next day, Jim moved all the furniture into the bin. It was a puzzle getting it all in. I forgot to take a photo of the full bin, but will do it before we unloaded it this summer.

It was odd having the rooms empty. The desk area in Eleri’s room was a dump zone. It was good to clean up that mess…most of it went in boxes to deal with later…always fun!