Shades for a Smiling Sun: Just call me Burro, cuz I'm a Pack Animal!

Packing has always been a challenge for me. My cousin Amanda recently remarked to me that when my dad helped her move he made a point of exclaiming "Finally, someone who is ready to go when I get here!" Yes, I've been known to be the last to check out of my college dorm room, to be frantically packing the night before a flight.

Well this time I made sure I had more than a week of lead time with no other major distractions to focus on packing for this cross-country move. There were shoes, clothes, certain documents, tech geek stuff, bed linens, towels and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff to pack. Thank goodness for zip lock vacuum storage bags that shrunk my clothes down considerably to fit in my luggage.

These were lifesavers...

Before...

After (the picture doesn't do it justice)...

I had hoped to squeeze everything into 2 checked bags, a backpack and one very large Timbuktu laptop bag (my "personal item") but alas, it became 3 checked bags. That doesn't even count the 40 pound box of books that my parents will ship me when I find an apartment. (Thanks for the suggestion of mailing them Jamie!)

When I got to the airport the moment(s) of truth came. I'd used a travel scale to guesstimate whether the bags were ok weight wise. First bag up: 50.5 pounds...hmm well Virgin America allows one bag to be up to 70 pounds so I'm still okay. Second bag up: 61 pounds...shoot I'd forgotten which bag was my 50+ pounder but the check-in lady let it slide. Third bag: 50.0 pounds...whew, barely made it. Total weight: 161.5 pounds of checked luggage plus probably 40 pounds or so of carry-on, so yeah I had about 200 pounds of stuff. All I can say in defense of myself is that I'm moving across the country to set-up my own place and I need more than one pair of dress shoes for work potentially.

So that was fun. Hopefully the only major packing I'll be doing in the next year is for a visit home!

The slow build-up begins with Day 1 of packing...