Heavy On My Mind

Today is Monday. I am doing the same thing I do most Mondays, that is I am cleaning house. After a weekend of the boys being penned up in the house by the soggy cold weather the house looks as if a tornado swept through. This week though, I notice I am being a little more ruthless than normal about throwing things out. Generally I am a bit of a pack-rat. So what has changed? Well as Dave announced we are going to Malawi this summer. The catch is the State Department imposes a weight limit on our house hold goods, 7200 pounds to be exact. Everywhere I look I see something else that needs to be thrown away or given away.

I have yet to meet another expat (other than FS) that ships by weight. Everyone else seems to ships by container size. If you think of those pictures of the big ships with all those big containers that look like a box car minus the wheels, those are the containers I am speaking of. In fact I know of at least one woman who was excited about her husbands promotion not due to any monetary increase but because now they were alloted a larger shipping container and she would be able to ship some antique Javanese furniture.

So far today I have thrown away several Burger King kids meal toys, a couple of t-shirts with small holes, a couple of blue kitchen towels that had gone all frayed on the end, a kids book with some torn pages and a ripped batik cicak. Nothing big or heavy but if I can manage to throw away a couple of items every time I clean house it will (hopefully) all add up to quite a lot of weight by the time we pack out in June. Maybe I should start weighing what I throw out each day and keep a running tally to see how much I weight I eliminate from our shipment.