What a week, what a task!

When making the decision to move your life to another country, there are major decisions to make on a whole host of subjects, the biggest decision to be made is obviously ‘do you move?’. Having made that decision, the next biggest decision I have found is ‘what to take’. As the move is a permanent one for us, the new house will be our home and we don’t want it to feel like a holiday let. To enable us to feel it’s our home means we want our own things around us. A lot of web sites suggest travel light and start again and that may suit some people, but not for us, we want most of our possessions to go with us.

As we are going to be renting initially for 6 months while our house is finished, and the villa is furnished we also have storage costs to consider. So, the next task is to decide in principle what we were going to take and then get quotes from both UK based and Spanish based companies to see what it will cost for the transportation and storage.

As always, using forums for recommendations and comments is useful, as this is not something friends and family can comment on as no-one else has gone through such a move. Searching the internet brings up so many companies, plus we receive the magazine ‘Living in Spain’ which has adverts in so there is plenty of information available, narrowing down is the problem.

Having found a company on the internet through looking for furniture packages to check prices for various items in Spain, I did a search on forums and found positive comments about the company so e-mailed them with a basic outline of what we were considering taking and asked for a guide price. I did this with several companies to check how service promises and prices compared.

I also remembered that when I had told my work colleagues I was leaving to move to Spain, one had mentioned that she had a relative in the region we were moving to, and we should contact them but of course, now the time had come, I couldn’t find the card so – mental note to get in touch and get the details again.

We all use the phrase ‘it’s a small world’ throughout our lives and this is certainly apt for this instance. One of the companies that responded quickly to my request for a quote was signed and I recognised the surname as that of my work colleague, I had by chance selected the company she had recommended.

Their quote was good compared to others, they covered insurance, storage which is based only a few miles from where we are moving to and had positive comments on some forums I am registered with, so they were our choice to move our possessions.

So, Instyle-Instorage are moving us to Spain. I’ll let you know how we get on.

http://www.instyle-instorage.com/

All we now need to do is agree on what we are taking. The larger items are not a problem, but try emptying a cupboard and deciding what to take, that’s where the coloured dots come in (as explained by Brinkley in http://2littlepuppies.blogspot.com/

Green means it’s going to Spain, anything with a red, yellow or white dot means it’s not – just different methods of disposal. Scaling down a house is not an easy task, trying to decide what to keep and take with you, what you take purely from an emotional point of view and which are purely from a practical one, is difficult. Sometimes the initial thought to keep something is then considered the wrong decision after you mull it over for 24 hours. There is no easy way to do this and we’ve got to take plenty of time to ensure we don’t get rid of something which we later wished we’d kept. After all, some things may have more relevance once we have moved than it does before purely because our friends and family are no longer nearby.

Fortunately for us, there are many items which we agree on, it’s the items which one of us wants to keep and the other doesn’t that lead to some interesting discussions. There is also the feeling that you don’t want to start getting rid of things too soon and be living in a shell. Don’t under-estimate how long this can take though, unless you are completely ruthless, which I’m not.