Loading up the Crate
As previously mentioned, we decided the most efficient way to move our belongings to Italy was to rent a 200-cubic foot crate. This crate would be put into a shipping container, trucked to South Carolina and loaded onto a ship where it would sail to an English-speaking European Union country, go through customs and then make its way down to Parma, Italy by truck. Sounds simple enough, right?
The shipping company we went with had always used a port in England to clear customs. However, due to the timing of the vote on whether the United Kingdom should leave or remain in the European Union, the shipping company needed to find another English-speaking port to do business with. Therefore, Rotterdam in the Netherlands is now the chosen port, along with a new set of customs documents.
For us, our largest and most challenging task was to decide what would go into the crate and what had to be given away, sold, thrown out or stored elsewhere. We were not renting a storage unit, so very few items could go to the “stored elsewhere” locations. For insurance purposes, I also had to make an itemized list of everything that would go into each box that went into the crate, including the replacement value for all the items. We also took photos of the items to have a more complete record. This was a very time consuming task and got quite complex as we moved items from box to box to allow for better packing options.
Our first two items that would go into the crate included our pre-1985 bicycles. Why? When we visited Italy in 2015, we had learned of an annual bicycle trip going from castle to castle in the Emilia-Romagna area where your bicycle had to be pre-1985. Since Larry’s Fuji was made in 1978 and my Dawes was made in 1982, we qualified.
The other items that ultimately made it into the crate included our favorite clothes, kitchenware, some books, and family memorabilia. Seventy-nine (79) boxes in total. The decisions were hard to make and caused much debate, and pleading in some cases, by both of us. To lighten it up a bit and to have some fun, I posted a few items on Facebook asking what people thought about the following items. As a result, they all made it into the crate!
In order to get a good perspective of the size of the crate, the shipping company recommended that you use blue painters tape and measure the dimensions of the crate in some location of your house. External dimensions were 87 inches (length) x 47 inches (width) x 87 inches (height). The internal dimensions were 83.75 inches (length) x 44.75 inches (width) x 81 inches (height). We laid out the internal dimensions initially in the upstairs back porch room; however, we realized that the boxes would be too heavy to carry down the stairs once they were filled, especially the bike boxes. So, we reconstructed the internal dimensions of the crate in the downstairs back porch room.
We had been making good progress with the packing for several solid weeks. With less than two days to go, before we had to take the boxes to Milwaukee to load into the crate, I decided to re-measure the perimeter dimensions again as I was trying to get an item into one of the remaining spaces. To my horror, I realized I had made a mistake when we transferred the upstairs blue taped dimensions to the downstairs blue taped dimensions. Instead of using the internal crate measurements, I inadvertently used the external crate dimensions for the length of the crate. This meant that we were over by 3.25 inches! To remedy the situation, I turned a few of the boxes on their sides and that seemed to fix part of the problem. However, three large plastic bins of clothes (shrink-wrapped) could no longer fit into the designated space. Now since we needed those clothes, Larry spent the day before we had to take the boxes to Milwaukee “making boxes” to fit into any cracks or spaces that were remaining and filling them up with the remaining clothes. Unfortunately, some clothes didn’t make it into the crate. Meanwhile, I was busy rearranging the Excel spreadsheet and getting the final inventory of all items to be presentable, filling out the new customs form, printing out the labels for the boxes and completing and scanning in all the required documentation to send to the shipping company.
Early the next morning, our friends, Joel Wolfgram and Terry Ryan, came over as we were ready to tape the labels onto the boxes and load them into the rented U-Haul truck to take to the trucking company in Milwaukee.
We we now on our way to Milwaukee. Once there, our task was to construct the 200-cubic foot crate, which was actually a large durable cardboard box. Sounds simple, but what an ordeal! We could not have done it without the help of our good friends, Terry and Joel. We had to construct the crate and load it in 90-degree heat and windy conditions. Due to the way I had taken the photos when we were de-assembling the boxes from our back porch, it was very difficult to re-assemble the boxes in the right order to load them into the constructed crate. So, we decided it would be better to take off the walls of the crate, assemble the boxes (like a jigsaw puzzle since the boxes were not uniformly sized) on the bottom of the crate, then put the walls back up when all the boxes were properly assembled. Unfortunately, it sounded good in theory, but we didn’t count on the wind, which would come up suddenly and knock the boxes down onto the pavement! We’ll see whether our China dishes made it in one piece when we finally get to unpack the crate in Italy.
Five hours later, we finally had the crate loaded and ready to be given to the trucking company where it will to be put into a truck and taken to South Carolina.
From South Carolina, it will be placed into a shipping container, where it will set sail for the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, it has to clear customs, then be taken to Parma, Italy by truck. Estimated arrival is 6–8 weeks pending no hang-ups along the way.
