My lists…Oh, how I love lists. (This part of the preparation makes me feel like we’re playing a real-life modern version of the Oregon Trail. We will not, however, have to hunt our own food. Or travel in covered wagons. Although if there’s a tour like that once we get there, I’d consider it. It is, however, *kind* of fun to figure out how everything will get from Philadelphia to Portland. And stripping your life down into ‘must haves’ vs. ‘nice to haves’. Very telling!) Here are the lists I am currently maintaining:

Pack for the airplane: list of stuff we will carry on the plane or put in our suitcases (i.e. how we will live until our shipped stuff arrives – see next point)

Sub-list includes: Things for our carry on bags.

Pack for shipping to ourselves: list of stuff we will ship to ourselves because we will need it in the limbo between corporate housing and buying a house (like my printer for work, for e.g.). Also, all extra clothes will be shipped. I think we should start an over / under pool on how many of our shipped boxes actually make it to us.

Things to do before we leave: this is dumb stuff like “wash the coffee pot on Wednesday morning, so it can be packed by the packers”; and important stuff like “get the car serviced and detailed before Saturday”; “get our medical records”; etc.

Things to do once we get there: this is stuff like “get a PO Box”. So far, that’s it. That’s the whole list. There’s not much else we can do until we buy a house.