Importing Household Goods : Was It Worth It : Part 3 of 3

::If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.:: 

- Sir Ken Robinson
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

This is part 3:3 in the series.  Part 1 : Part 2

 

Last Saturday, at 1 a.m., five men, myself, and two teen girls with their mother supervising, brought the contents of my Austin, Texas 10' x 10' x 10' storage unit of household goods, safely from a 40' shipping container into my tiny Merida, Mexico house!  

By 2 a.m., surrounded by thirty-five 30 gallon totes, 9 canvas Space Bags, 5 cardboard boxes, and 22 pieces of furniture,  Manuel, aka Lolo, my contractor, and his apprentice, Yoyo, sat at my kitchen table drinking strong New Orleans French roast coffee with chicory, while I prepared my first full meal in my new home.  Our celebratory breakfast consisted of baked bacon, an omalette, and sliced strawberries with powdered sugar, all prepared in my REAL cookware, in my REAL kitchen!  

One of the most wonderful aspects of shipping from one country to the another, is that every item must be catalogued.  With my list in hand, I knew exactly which numbered tote went into which room of the house, and where to immediately find anything I wanted.  Locating my cookware was a snap!

In addition to every box being numbered, My "How-To" process for packing involved using the color and size of the totes to help with the organization.  The advantage of this system allowed the movers to easily recognize where each group of items were to be placed in the house.  Words, like "kitchen" or "bedroom", written on the sides of the totes or boxes would have been worthless as my Mexican friends read little English.  Here is an example of my system for my studio items:

LARGE PURPLE TOTES

1. Sewing thread box (clear plastic), vapor filter mask, light green silverware box filled with 40 tubes of acrylic paint, paper for collage in plastic folder, Buddah concrete garden plaque by Tina, retablos, marble cutting board  with taped Xacto knife and blades.
2. Under cabinet radio/cd player, 4 metal frames with mats, portfolio images in bound black zipped binder, 8 glassware containers filled with various art supplies such as chaulk, pens, paint brushes, zippers, etc..
3. Various art supplies, including iron, fabric, Velcro, box display, four painted cubes ("small conversation",  three plaster works ("I love you" & "belly button lint"), five plaster pieces ("yo, mama") 

This system allowed the broker to identify every item on the manifest very quickly, reducing delays at port.  As I live in a very large and busy city, the 40' shipping containers arrival during early morning hours was an attempt to limit the obstruction of the street to through traffic.  By placing a coordinating color construction paper sign in each room of my house, the movers knew immediately where to place every item, allowing us to more than meet the one hour window I was given for unloading the container.   

Someone recently asked me how many people were involved in my move.  Logistically, the two primary agencies were the port-to-port company and the brokerage company.  However, when the time actually came to take the items to port, a third entity appeared, namely, the shipping container drivers.  In the mix were the port authorities, the schedulers, and the many people who helped me load the container in Austin, and unload the container in Merida.  If I include moving the items from my Austin home into the storage unit, unpacking several times to better organize the items, in total, my items were heavily handled 3 times by 15 different people.  Amazingly, when I unpacked, only three items were broken.  

Random thoughts as I unpacked my shipping container "gifts":

• Two years is a long time to be without a home
• Oh, that's for when Nancy, Marlene, Lynette, Rhonda, Sophia, Joan and Barbara come over for lunch.  I  knew I bought a table for 8 for a reason!  
• Patrick and Forrest, our stuff is here in Mexico! Come help your mother unpack.
• OMG, why did I pack that!
• WOW! I have more art than I remembered packing.
• I've really made this happen!

Thank you Universe for keeping me safe and out of my own way.

Create the life you want!
The Broad


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