The Stressful State of Stuff

We have too much stuff. Household items, clothes, books, decorations, tools, parts, paints, furnishings and what not: we have a lot of it. And most of it needs to go. Maybe.

Moving typically results in a reduction of our collection of stuff, and Elayne and I have moved from house to house within the Portland area a number of times, and then moved to and from Vancouver BC, which all helped to keep the aggregation of clutter down to a reasonable level. But we have lived here at our place in central Oregon for nearly thirteen years and so we have gathered more stuff than we have ever owned before.

The general advice given for  international moves is to git rid of everything except for a basic set of clothing, items with sentimental value, or things you will need but cannot easily replace in your new home.

For us this would mean at the minimum our clothes (neither of us have that much) and tack for Topaz and Taylor (which is an extension of the clothing category) plus some art work. There are companies that offer shipping a loaded pallet of goods to Europe for around $3,000 (shipped in such a way to avoid going through the dreaded Portugal Customs) which would be perfect for this minimal approach.

But we also own really nice furniture that holds sentimental value (to me) as well. Our dining room table, chairs and sideboard were custom built and are made of solid cherry (even the "secondary wood") and our couch, also custom, is made from solid walnut. They are also of a style we particularly like: shaker. Looking at furnishings available in Portugal I see nothing like it, and it would be hard (for me) to go from these furnishings to the veneered particle board offerings from Ikea or other contemporary furniture stores. Looking at furniture shops in Portland I see that it would cost $25,000 today to replace just these few items. Yeah, it really is top quality.

Worse, there is no way our furnishings in central Oregon would sell for more than a tiny fraction of what they are worth. I would rather give it away to friends and family than sell it all for maybe a thousand dollars total to people who would not appreciate it.

And so we need to decide if we should give away our nice furniture or take it with us.

For the latter this means a shipping container, which even at today's inflated prices can be done for around $12,000 (maybe less). But this price can swell if you add in potential extra storage and import or export duties. Officially we have a year after entering Portugal as first time residents to import personal items without paying fees, but sometimes your container is the one randomly selected by US export control or Portuguese Customs, and you must pay them for the privilege of storing and inspecting your container. This could easily add up to over $5,000. But even with this extra amount the cost is still less than the value of just the furniture alone, and we would be able to ship other items, including everything from the $3,000 pallet option.

But that extra space is a double edged sword. It means we could bring more stuff!

We could bring a few extra things, like our largish smart TVs and our nicer bedroom set. But in general Portuguese rooms are smaller than US rooms and all of our stuff that would fit in a 20' container might not fit in a new home.

And when would we bring over our stuff? If we're moving over for a trial period of living does it even make sense to bring our stuff over right away? Obviously the duty free clock starts ticking the moment we enter Portugal and lasts only a year. It is much easier to find unfurnished places to rent than furnished. Plus keeping things stored over here in the US would add significant storage fees to an already expensive move.

This all adds up to being more affordable to move our stuff over around when we arrive.

But what if after a year or so we decide we would rather live somewhere else? We will then face the exact same decision of what to do with our stuff all over again.

What to do? Argh. Stress!

I will save the discussion of paring down the stuff we will definitely not be taking with us for another day.

Now let's talk about when we should bring the horses over...