Life with stick furniture

The truck is gone. They packed all our stuff into nine separate crates. The crates are then taped shut and secured with a label that either JB or myself sign. If the crate is opened before it gets to us in the Azores, that label would be broken. I suppose it is supposed to give us extra assurance that yes indeed, everything will arrive to us intact and complete.

I'm happy we only had nine crates. We had eight when we came here. Since we bought a ton of rugs, a desk, three bookshelfs, and added a child, I don't really feel that adding one crate is too bad for accumulation purposes over the course of two years. I hope that when we leave the Azores in two (or more) years, we can stay at nine or less.

Our stuff, everything we own, is on its way to the Azores. But we have six more weeks of life here in Turkey before we join our things.

So how does that work exactly? I realized this is a foreign idea to many people. So I thought I would take a moment to share how life works for us without-stuff people.

Overseas Bases have loaner furniture. They deliver it to your house. It is bare bones and enough to get by. We call it "stick furniture" here at Incirlik. There is an incredibly uncomfortable blue couch. Two very stiff chairs. A dining room table with chairs. A plain plastic high chair. Stiff beds. Drab dressers. Night stands. Hotel lamps. A changing table. A box of kitchen utensils. An ironing board and an iron.

You get furniture based on your family size. And you can beg a little. For instance the rule is that a married couple gets one full-sized bed. This will just NOT work for the likes of six foot three JB and me. So we asked for two twin beds. They were nice and gave us two fulls. The boys each have a twin. We opted to not get a crib and keep Abigail in a pack-n-play so that she can stay in the same bed for awhile.

You can choose when they ship your stuff out. You can choose if you want to be without things longer on this end (in our case, Turkey) or on the other end (in our case, Azores). We chose to be without on this end. We know a lot of people here. We have a lot of support. It'll be easier to get help with things we don't have here than it would be there. It is our hope that because we sent our stuff out so soon, it will be waiting for us when we get to Lajes Air Force Base. Or at least soon behind us.

Our Van goes out on Monday. After that we will be carless here on Base. We can rent a vehicle or take a taxi. We will probably try to do most things on foot and not rent a vehicle. We don't have our bikes because they are on the way to the Azores.

We do keep a lot of our stuff with us that we will mail ourselves or carry with us in suitcases. I keep an empty box on a counter, and as we see something that we can live without for the next six weeks, we add it to the box. When the box is filled, we mail it to our friends in the Azores, Nick & Kristy. Or to ourselves when we get our PO Box set up. We can start doing this 30 days out. (We are about 45 days right now.) Since mailing to ourselves is free, we were very liberal with what we kept behind. We will probably end up mailing a dozen or more boxes of things like towels, sheets, blankets, pillows, clothes, etc. We kept a few toys for the kids. A couple of books. But mostly what we kept are clothes and linens and toiletries.

Things you cannot mail and do not get that are difficult to live without:

• Microwave: Our friend Heather actually emailed us without a request from us ... offering her's! So helpful when you have a baby still drinking bottles. It was a prayer of mine so I am really glad to get it. It's actually the exact same model we had. Yay!
• TV: We've opted to just not have one. Sounds scary to people in the States, but here, TV is just not that good, and we have learned to live without it. We did keep a portable DVD player for the boys so that they can watch videos now and then. We can check out the news on the computer.
• Rugs: A house full of tile gets a bit old and dirty fast without any rugs in the house. But another great offer came our way from our friends Jake & Rana. Some people get their whole house carpeted with cheap carpet. Jake and Rana had Sarah Ashmore's old carpet in their storage shed. This will really help in coating the floor a bit.
• Computer: While our big MAC is gone, we have our tiny laptop to hold us over.
• Toys: Friends and the Thrift Store are the key ingredients to this puzzle. Friends will drop by a box of toys that they will loan to you. We've already had two friends drop off boxes. I also went to the Thrift Store and spent twenty dollars on toys too. Most likely I will return these to the Thrift Store before I leave.
• Books: The library is awesome for this! We just went and checked out dozens of books. They are new and exciting and wonderful to help enertain. You can also find some at the Thrift Store or borrow some from friends.
• Brooms/Mops/Vacuum: Sometimes you keep your old ones and give them to a friend. Sometimes you send them and just buy a new or used one at the BX or Thrift Store. Sometimes you borrow one from a friend. You just have to do what works.
• Laundry Baskets: Usually I keep an old laundry basket that I just throw away or give to the Thrift Store when we leave. I also will use the tubs that our loaner kitchen stuff comes in as laundry baskets. I also put some dressers in our laundry room so that I can just keep more of the kids clothes downstairs right now, eliminating the need for a laundry basket.
• Bikes: We opted to keep the boys little three-wheelers and mail them to ourselves later. They are integral for us getting around Base. We go everywhere with me pushing Abigail in the stroller and the boys on their bikes. We kept one stroller and sent our double stroller.
• Exersaucer: I need something safe to put Abigail in when we are outside playing since she can't walk yet. We opted to keep our exersaucer and mail it to ourselves later.
• Art work: The walls are quite bare. We got the movers to leave us some paper and decorated the walls ourself. Great fun!

A few days before we are scheduled to fly out, we will do a final inspection with Base housing to assure our house is ready to sign off. Then we will move into a hotel on the Base. Many houses on our Base are currently being rennovated and there is a housing shortage. So they are putting some smaller families in TLF (on-Base hotel) right after their stuff is gone to free up their house earlier. But we are a large family with a large dog. Going into TLF (a two bedroom with no yard) would be stifling for us.

So we'll go into TLF just a few days before we fly out. And then we'll fly to the Azores.

Do you have any other questions? Is there anything I did not answer? Let me know, and I'll be glad to answer them for you.