And then there was the floor… March 21, 2012

About a week ago, three removals companies scared the life out of me by declaring confidently that there was no way on earth that our belongings would fit into a 40 foot container.

As I may have mentioned before, I have no size, volume or spatial awareness, so frankly a 40 foot container could be only as long as my Volvo, or it could be as long as Terminal 3; but whichever way I look at it, surely our belongings should fit into it as the costs being quoted are eye-watering.

For consolation I’ve taken to reading endless threads on Expatwoman that are related to relocation. I’ve been hugely distressed to discover that many people arrive and leave Dubai using a 20 foot container. My mental maths is reasonably sharp so I’m confident that those containers are a mere half the size of the one we ‘don’t fit into’.

Something is surely not right.

Fuelled by my growing panic, I rapidly took photographs of every large item in our house and uploaded them to Dubizzle (a sort of local Ebay). 

A week went by filled by time wasters and lunatics.

Time Waster 1: “Do the sofas come in any other colour?”

Me: “No, for a range of colours, you need to try IKEA.”

 

Time Waster 2: “What do you keep in your teak wood chest?”

Me: “I’m not sure that is any of your business.”

 

Time Waster 3: “Can you keep things other than shoes on the shoe rack?” 

Me: “You can keep dead bodies on it for all I care, just come and take it away.”

 

 

Then two nights ago, the furniture angel arrived. Admittedly, he didn’t look very angelic, but he had cash, a team of willing packers, and a desire to clear my house of pretty much every seat I own.

He took the 6 seater L shape sofa from the playroom, 2, 3 seater sofas from the lounge, and even the giant teak coffee table.

Now this is all fabulous from a ‘maybe now we’ll fit in the container’ perspective, but as the blonde rightly pointed out, “mummy, we have nothing to sit on”.

Big brother, always eager to help out, advised that we were pretending to be “in the olden days before sofas were invented”.

So, 16th century living with twinsmummy this week… can’t beat it.

 

Turns out, we’re too big for a container too… March 13, 2012

For some time now, twinsdaddy and I been debating when is the right time to say farewell to Dubai and head home to England. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost 10 years since we headed off to Singapore on our first expat adventure.

In the last decade we’ve lived and worked in Asia, the UK and the Middle East and moved house more times than we care to remember. We always knew we’d end up back in England and after many years away, it’s finally time to go home.

Now this is all very exciting and will no doubt form the subject matter for many posts over the coming months; but as a follow-up to being too big for a hotel room; I’ve just discovered, we’re also too big for a 40ft container. And frankly, that’s a bit of a worry.

Fearing that we may have accumulated some ‘stuff’ over the last four years, and knowing we’d arrived here with an almost full container, I thought I’d better get the experts round to assess the situation accurately.

My worst scenario was confirmed in a 30 second phone call earlier today when J happily informed me that yes, our belongings comfortably exceed the 60 cubic metres of a 40 ft shipping (or maybe that should read shopping) container.

“Have you accumulated much since you’ve been in Dubai?”, she merrily trilled down the phone?

Well yes actually. Twins.

How many cubic meters do they take up?