Packing

Happy New Year! 2008!

It was the start of a new year… 2008, and Scott & I had planned to wind things down with our businesses so we could work on our exit strategy. It had been about 18 months since we purchased our home in Grenada. It was now time to make the final plans for getting there! There would be no vacation this January/February! Our “to do” list included selling our home and Scott’s business property and selling 4 vehicles... we actually had interested buyers for both properties! We both had to decide what items we’d be taking with us (from our business), and what we could sell.

By mid-February, we were ready to put a few things up on ebay for sale. We were amazed at how well we did that first week! So we kept it going! Each of us would pull out items we could post for sale & we’d get started on it together. After about 3 weeks of doing this, we had a pretty good system of tracking things. Scott was the “Shipping Department”, and I was the “Main Office”… and photographer. We continued selling on ebay until around Memorial Day. We also used Craig’s List for selling a few pieces of furniture. And we started cleaning out closets and packing!

I had checked into the process for getting a shipping container here to move our belongings to Grenada. Tropical Shipping (out of Florida) was recommended, so we worked with them. Fortunately, we had some guidance from friends who had already moved to Grenada (from Britain). We figured we could do our own packing & loading of the container, rather than hiring someone else to do it. That meant we were responsible for providing a packing list of items inside, which would be reviewed by Customs upon arrival in Grenada.

Meanwhile, I was also working on trying to figure out what I needed to take the parrots with us. This was not an easy task! After a few calls to Grenada, I was told I’d need a health certificate and a CITES permit. The health certificate I was sure I could get from my avian vet, but I had no idea what CITES is! I hoped the vet could help me with that as well.

We settled on Scott’s business property first… around the end of April. Then we scheduled settlement on the house for the end of May. (We would stay in the house and rent for the month of June.) The packing & selling continued. And we still had business accounting to handle… sales tax reporting and end of year tax returns. There was so much to do… time just flew by!

Come July 1… we’ll need to be out of the house in Mount Joy!