Creative Packing

Part of the perks of being a military family, moving on military orders is someone coming in, packing your stuff and moving it for you. The downside, you are never guaranteed to see those items in the same condition (or at all for that matter), that it was placed into the box as.

Well this move, we were one of the lucky families that ended up with no show movers! We should have had a walk through a week before to determine, sizes of mattresses, any appliances, and an estimate of the amount of boxes, paper and tape that would be needed.

Our movers were scheduled to come in and pack on June 24th, a Thursday. On Monday June 21st, I called to find out what was going on, as we had not had our walk through, and was getting pretty anxious. Turns out, movers won't be coming. Turns out that there is some sort of informal movers strike going on.

DOD revamped the moving system, that was set in place back in 1970. The new revamped program, apparently recalculated the amount payed to moving companies. Under the new system, they are getting a pay cut. I know not of how much this cut is.

So yay! Lucky us! We have 2 choices. We can put our move in the old system, and see if any movers will take it, or we do what is called a DITY move. Meaning we would have to do all of it ourselves, but we would be reimbursed for it.

After a very frustrating phone call to hubby to update him, lots of tears, I got a hold of my good friend Charity. She has used a company called ABF, they were able to come to the rescue!

We packed very creatively. I'm talking, we didn't use any packing paper, only items that we owned. Everything that would have been packed in packing paper, was caked in clean clothing, towels, sheets, blankets, ect! Most of my food items...in my freezer!

What? You don't believe me??? Take a look for yourself!

Everything has been packed nice and tight, but not so tight that if a hard shift were to take place they would break! Wholes were filled with toddler clothing, and everything was taped in tight with packing tape. The door, locked and taped as well! 

Here are some closer shots!

Now is that creative or what??? And, on the up side, I'm not going to have to do any major shopping when we get to WA!