Sorting Out Your Move: A Guide on Shipping Your Belongings Abroad | Expat Empire
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When it comes time to actually leave for your new home abroad, you’re feeling a wide range of emotions. Butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms, and a profound, surreal feeling are what you’re bound to experience as you begin your migration. To help build your home abroad, you’ve wanted to bring the belongings that help make you fulfilled and happy. Sure, you can always buy new clothes and furniture, but it’s the little sentimental items you want to help tie you back to your home country.
Your physical journey to your new home abroad should be one where you try to minimize stress, yet there is an uncontrollable level of uncertainty that we all experience when living in a new country. Not all of these possessions will be able to fit in your checked luggage. Worrying about pulling and carrying the luggage equivalent of your own bodyweight around as you spend 24 hours or more in airplanes and airports is not a stress you want to put on yourself and your family.
Luckily, you won’t need all those sentimental belongings in your new home those first few weeks as you hit the ground running. Plan to bring a small suitcase with the essentials while your other cherished belongings take the safer and slower route. For your shipping needs, we recommend using Eurosender, a shipping and logistics company at the forefront of digital technology.
Sorting Your Belongings Before the Move
When you’re moving abroad, bringing your grand piano or entire record collection shouldn’t be your first instinct though those can be arranged at a later date if you wish. As you start to pack up and move out of your current residence, it’s important to think minimalistic. Packing for your actual journey comes later, but you can start the process by dividing all of your belongings into three “piles”: Sell or Donate, Store, and Bring.
Selling or Donating: This group should include the largest amount of your possessions compared to Storing or Bringing. These items are ones that you can see yourself successfully living without in the future. They’re non-sentimental and something you can easily replace if you need them abroad. For example, you might sell some of the chairs in your living room or the extra appliances in your kitchen. You can try holding a garage sale or posting them for sale online using classified sites like Craigslist or OLX. The extra money will help you along the way in your move. For those possessions that you can’t sell beforehand, consider donating to friends and family or a charity organization that can help those in need. It’s better to give your things away for free instead of paying a removal company to take them from you.
Storing for the Long Haul: These are the items that you don’t want to part with but can’t take them with you right away. They’re the sentimental ones you can’t just throw into the wind. It might be a while before you can move some of these items or you may choose just to keep them in long-term storage in the country you’re departing from. You might choose to bring these possessions along at some point, but it’s often best to leave them with a close family member or friend that can hold onto them or store them away in an inexpensive storage unit until you determine your long-term residence plans.
Bringing Along: This should be your smallest pile by far. It should be a collection of your most favorite and most trustworthy necessities — your most comfortable clothes, a few sets of good shoes for walking, a few books, your laptop, etc. It goes without saying that you need all of your travel necessities in this pile, too. If you’re carrying anything fragile or valuable, it’s best to keep it on your person instead of checked luggage. Plan on minimalist living for a few days or weeks as the rest of your belongings arrive. Take this time to get comfortable and relax!
Shipping and Logistics: Finding the Right Service
The way you move your possessions to your new home abroad all depends on how much time and money you have. Typically, shipping is divided into three methods:
Ground shipping is an option for any situation where road or train travel between countries is possible. This is a great option for Americans going to Canada, Mexico, or Central America. It also works for those in Europe or the UK that can take advantage of the infrastructure on the continent. This is a fairly fast option unless multiple border crossings are involved, which will require lengthy customs checks at each border.
Air shipping is by far the fastest option though it is often very expensive. The weight and size of your shipment increases your costs dramatically as space on a cargo airplane comes at a premium. The upside to this is everything will arrive not long after you do. Keep in mind that air cargo requires screening for aircraft safety, so be sure not to pack anything you wouldn’t otherwise put in your checked luggage.
Sea shipping is the least restrictive and cheapest method by volume for moving your belongings abroad, though it takes much more time than the other methods. Buying space in a container is a great option for those moving a lot of possessions abroad since containers are normally a flat rate that covers the volume of space on a ship. If you intend to take a significant amount of furniture or import your car to your new country, then sea shipping may prove to be the best option. However, this method necessitates some strategic packing for your trip abroad since you won’t have the majority of your belongings for several weeks or months.
Trust the Professionals for Your Move Abroad
We recommend using Eurosender for your global shipping needs. Their entire service is based on a digital platform that makes your shipping easy to track on their website. Questions about what you can ship and how you can ship it can become a source of anxiety during your move, so it’s great that they also provide a transparent breakdown of those requirements.
Most importantly, their rates are affordable for the quality of service they provide. David, our founder here at Expat Empire, used Eurosender in the past and was very satisfied with how everything arrived on-time and in great condition. This is in contrast to his previous overseas shipping experiences. One such experience was when he packed everything himself in Japan and, once it arrived in Germany, he didn’t even recognize the boxes because they had been so beaten up by the wear and tear of the shipping journey.
Fortunately, this experience didn’t repeat itself with Eurosender. Take our word for it — you never want to have to worry about the safety and security of your personal belongings as they make the long trip to join you abroad!
Tell Your Story
Have you had any painful experiences with moving your belongings abroad? Know any good companies that help with shipping and logistics? Want to leave some tips for fellow expats and travelers? Leave a comment on this post below. If you’d like to share your story about travel struggles and accomplishments, write it up and get it featured on our blog!
Start Your Expat Journey
Whether you are looking to move abroad or just country hop for a while, Expat Empire is here to assist you with those big questions. Take a look at our consulting services to see which of them will take you to the next step in your journey abroad.
Originally published at https://expatempire.com on April 14, 2021.
