How to Pack Storage, Psycho-Organized Version

Even though we make our home in Africa, we usually spend most years in Colorado and in Ohio. Naturally, this leads to an accumulation of stuff. Mikey thought our ‘stuff trail’ was bad a few years ago. Well, that was nothin’ compared to our stuff trail now with kids. Sorry babe.

Our stuff in Colorado fills a 10 by 10 storage unit that contains lots of clothes that are growing outdated with each passing season, an entire household worth of goods and furniture, minus my favorite couches that my husband convinced me to sell when we packed our storage up (for the second time) in 2010, just after the birth of sweet N. I (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to sell my fav couches because we knew that IKEA would be open in Denver by the time we would possibly move back to Colorado again and set up another home. But that is a serious rabbit trail.

We haven’t really gotten into this storage unit much in the past five years except for that six months in 2009-2010 that we unexpectedly found ourselves moving back into our small house while Mike got his bachelor’s degree in record time and I incubated, nested-for and birthed my sweet daughter.

Our Ohio storage on the other hand is much more fluid. We get into it each time we’re home for a visit. In it I can find my library cards, my 'America' clothes, winter-wear for everyone (no use for THAT in Africa), outgrown kiddie clothes, toys that didn’t fit in the luggage and a thousand other random things that we may or may not need when we return home for another visit someday.

Problem is, I can’t remember from year to year what we have in storage and I do not ever want to bring something home from Africa to the U.S. if it’s something I already have in the U.S. Cause that would mean one less NEW thing fits in our luggage on the way back.

Oh my. Are you confused? Our lives are a tad bit complicated, I understand.

SO (Am I getting to the point, you wonder?) a couple years ago I created a system to quickly and easily know what we have in storage in my parent’s basement. And I have recently improved upon that system. This organization and efficiency brings life to my soul, so I’ll share it with you now, in case you care and ever find yourself having to pack up and store your life in three different places.

The first step in this process is to organize your junk into various categories. My piles included books, Mike’s clothes, kids’s toys, boy clothes, car stuff etc.

This bin has already been labeled “Girl Clothes” and “Baby Stuff”. (Ha! That sentence made me feel like I am on a cooking show or something and my project was magically prepared.)

Aaaanyway…

First, take a picture of the empty tote. When you load the pics on your computer, this will be your indication that the following pictures are things that are included this category (and are therefore in this very tote).

Now, plop yourself on the carpet with the pile of stuff that fits in this category on one side of you and the empty bin on the other. And get ready to lay stuff out, click your camera and toss it in the bin.

Click: Awwwww! Baby girlie sleepers! Remember when she was so teensy and tiny?

Now toss (or fold) them into the bin.

Click: Her sweet blankets! Every time I pack these away I try and TRY to find a reason to need these heavy, soft and gorgeous blankets in my sauna of a country in Africa. But I never can find that reason and I reluctantly pack them away. So sad.

Click: Newborn outfits. *Sniff*

Click: Cupcake hoodie and leggings. Maybe she could still fit into that this ‘winter’ in Africa?? Probably not…

Click: Eensy onesies. The sweetest.

Click: Cupcake cardigan!! Oh please oh please oh please can I have another girlie so she can wear this too?!! (Nope, not pregnant, thanks for asking.)

Click: Summer romper! She wore this one all the way through Asia, but it’s on the tight side now with a disposal diaper, so she certainly won’t be able to wear it with her cloth diapered bum on the other side of the globe.

Click: Her newborn hats. I love them.

Click: A handful of items that will fit her in a year’s time. I wouldn’t want to forget that she has a super cute pool-towel-dress to grow into, would I?

Not Pictured: A hundred more things that I won’t bore you with.

Finally, take a picture of the fully packed tote. This is your indication in your photo file that the baby girl clothes tote has finished being inventoried.

Then repeat the whole process with the next pile and tote.

That’s it! I did about a dozen totes (ahem, I mean only a couple totes, Honey!) like this before we left Ohio a couple weeks ago.

And it brings peace to my bones. Amen.

Book Boredom

This family is really into books. You may know that by now. If you don't know that, you can find proof here, where my big boy was reading to my baby girl and my heart melted. Or here where my kiddos had storytime in Thailand with their Daddy. Or here where H was looking through his big ol' stack of library books. Books are a twice-daily ritual for us. We like it that way.

Aaaanyway, we've been in Jordan a couple weeks now and we have only a handful of books to read during storytime before bed. Needless to say, I think my husband is growing a big bored of them.



We've probably read this one a hundred times by now. But last night the whole book was read with a new and unusual spy voice. Sure did keep me on the edge of my seat, wondering if Topsy and Tim were really going to find their luggage on the moving belt at the airport of if some mafia bosses were going to come in and snatch it from under their innocent noses.

In the end, despite all the suspense in the dramatic reading, Topsy and Tim had an uneventful trip on the aeroplane. Whew.



And you'll never guess who showed up to read this book! The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I know. Amazing! The whole book which used to be regular prose was suddenly transformed into a rap.

Groovy.



And the little Puppy who loses his bark daily in our house, suddenly lost his 'meow' instead.

Oh my.

We really need to get back home...

and P.S. I LOVE my husband. He's the best.

Budding Artist

Lately I noticed that my son hadn't ever really drawn a picture. He does 'H' all the time, and circles and scribbles. But that about covered it.

So we got out this handy dandy little erasable doodle board from Grammi and I asked him what he wanted me to draw. I proceeded to draw several 'pages' of cranes and diggers and bulldozers. Then I drew a picture of our family, all the while narrating what I was drawing and why.

I thought this just might get him going on doodling himself.

I was right!



He took the marker from my hand and quickly and decisively produced his first drawing!



It's a self-portait, duh.



Then he erased it and drew it again.

You're wondering exactly what is happening in this masterpiece, right?

Don't worry. I wondered too.

He's jumping into a swimming pool, obviously!



Here is another rendition, with H looking more like a pirate, for some reason.



Here is another from the next day.



And another.

They just keep on comin'.

But wait.

When I asked him if he could draw me (hoping to get him to think outside the box, or pool as it may be), he looked up at me with his concentrated I'm-an-artist-studying-my-model's-face look. And then...



He drew this.

It's me! I have a ponytail!

It's the most beautiful artwork I've ever seen in my life.

Conservationist

This, once again, is the view from our window. It's a glorious window... wide open, no screen, and it lets in a glorious amount of fresh air (if you can believe it, in this city), cool breeze and no bugs!

I love it.

But do you notice anything about all these roofs?



Like, something they all have in common besides the cement construction, tan color, poles and wires all over the place and the sheer number of satellite dishes?

No?

K, I'll just tell ya, cause that's a really hard question and it's super hard to see the photo.



Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE has a water tank.

Water only comes one day in the week. It runs for a bit over twenty-four hours. During those twenty-four hours you frantically wash every dirty item of clothing and linen, you scrub your children real good and hope it lasts, you bathe yourself for the first time in an unwilling-to-admit amount of days and you actually do a full flush of the toilet every chance you get. AND you wash and rinse the dishes with more of a teensy trickle coming from the tap.

And what do you do the rest of the week? You conserve, big time. And you hope that the tank that got filled in that glorious twenty-four hours of water will last 'til water comes again.

And what I mean by 'you' is 'me'. But I'm sure you caught that.

Some people have many tanks. Or huge tanks. Or they pay for a big water truck to come and re-fill their tank mid-week.



The water tank above our flat is this size. One cubic meter.

And we are six people.

And it's got to last for six days.

Think we can do it?

My Lady Snacker

It's always fun to discover the snacks that a new place has to offer. Going to the store to get a treat is one of my boy's favorite things to do. And 'a treat' typically costs about seven cents here. But you really get what you pay for cause the stuff lacks any sort of nutritional value.

Anyway, since this is an Arabic speaking (and writing, duh) country, I don't always know what we're buying. It's kinda of like those mystery brown paper bags at the dollar store labeled 'boy' or 'girl'. Never know what might be inside! (No, I don't buy those... it's gotta be all the leftover junk, right?)



This one wasn't quite a mystery, cause it said "POPCORN" on the front in English. But it is that fake puffy kind of popcorn instead of the real stuff. Delicious! I love this stuff.



So do my kiddos. One day I gave Sweet N a bag of it, expecting her to wander around the house as she snacked, in classic toddler-snacking fashion. But instead she put the bag on the table, climbed up into her seat, grabbed a spoon and fed herself popcorn off the spoon.



She's such a little lady.

p.s. As I was writing this, my kiddos came back from a trip to the store for a treat with their Daddy. Girlie came back with a tiny box of chocolate milk and H came back with a bottle of water! A bottle of water?! He said "Tomorrow I might get chocolate milk, but today all I want is water."

Pardon me. What in the world?! What three year old boy just asks for a bottle of water for a treat?! Ha!

Marhaba!

We're here.

We're in Jordan! We've been here several days, actually.



If you are curious, the kids were traveling champs!

We didn't end up getting a bassinet and sitting at the bulkhead (the row at the front which has extra room for kiddos) even though I spent about an hour on the phone a couple different days with two airlines trying to procure these amazing seats. But because there were a ton of babies on the flight (Middle Eastern airline, duh! I should have realized.) they were already taken when we checked in. But my begging paid off and the nice employee (yes, thee one and only nice employee we interacted with) gave us FOUR seats at the last minute instead of just three.

God bless him.

Begging often pays off. Ever tried it? (Don't tell my son I said that.)

Anyway, four seats is WAAAAAY better than just three! And the long flight was overnight. N cried for awhile and eventually fell asleep in her Daddy's arms at one end of the row. (She rarely chooses me over him, and in this case... I was okay with that. Ha!) At the other end of the row next to me H tossed and turned in his seat long enough that I asked him if he wanted to lay on the floor like a bed and to my surprise (and joy!) he said "Yes!"

So I settled him on the floor and then got comfy lying down on the remaining THREE seats for a nice snooze myself!

Wow!

Four seats, four people, and I got three to myself?! Call me selfish, whatever... no one else was gonna use them! And I slept! Glory halleluiah... I rarely have gotten a good sleep on airplanes since I gave birth.

It was amazing!



Before we took off, these girlies made friends, which is great for the entertainment factor. Especially since this girl and her sister both had iPhones which had an app that had black and white kitties for piano keys that you could play. A bit creepy, maybe. But it entertained my toddler and frankly that's all that matters.



So here we are, in East Amman. The weather is amazing, the view is extraordinary and the shwarma is as good as I remembered it.



Mmmmm. Shwerma.

We've been laying pretty low. Setting up meetings when we can. Getting work done when we can. Getting to know our new friends/hosts. And thanking Jesus that our kids have had virtually NO jet lag whatsoever. Sweet N woke up two nights at 1am, stood up and began to wander around the room (and hug her sleeping brother?) until we discovered her, placed her back in her sleeping tent and told her to go back to sleep.

And she did.

And that has been the extent of it.

But she has started a different sleeping habit.



She regularly rolls out of her tent and sleeps on the hard carpet floor instead of the padded inside.



It has happened more often than not!



(awwwww, so sweet!)



It's really pretty funny.



And no, we don't pick her up and relocate her. It's too risky... are you crazy?!

So that's the story!

We're hopeful that we'll be back in Africa by the end of next week. But in the meantime, we're making the best of Jordan!

All Set

I always have so much to say when we're about to travel.

But I have no time.

However, I thought you all (hello?) might like to know that we're all set!

I have successfully packed and weighed eight 50(51, 52?) pound bags. I always overpack by a pound or two, cause I'd hate to get to the airport and have all the bags weigh in at 48 pounds. Two extra pounds times eight bags equals a lot of cookie mix and Christmas cards. Better safe than sorry, I'd say. I always put something 'bonusy' on the top so that if I get a strict lil' desk clerk then I have something easy to snatch out to appease her. I've also packed four carry-ons, with two more to be packed in the morning. My family's traveling clothes are laid out and my head is about to hit the pillow just a hair past midnight.

Do I hear applause?

Just my own, I think.

;)

And don't you worry. I have left myself a large yellow note so that I don't forget to put the fourteen pounds of cheddar cheese and chocolate chips in the specially purchased cooler and return it to it's allotted space in trunk number 5.

You think I'm joking?

You're wrong.

We have priorities around here, people.

And yes, I accounted for the weight in my pre-travel weight checks. And yes, my trunks and duffels are numbered. And I have a detailed list of what each contains.

How silly of you to have to ask.

Don't you know warm and fuzzy organization makes me feel inside?

"If you don't know me by now... you will never never never know me. OOOoooooooo"

AAAAAAnnway...

Would you like to ask God to be with us on this trip? Three flights total. Two short domestic, and one marathon 14.5 hour one.

Lord have mercy on us!