Restricted HHG Weight with an Allocation for Humor

The hacky sack sat plump and unremarkable on top of our entertainment shelf. Our HHG were delivered just yesterday, and of all things, this hacky sack brought the best smirk to my face. Sure, it was absolutely hilarious when our cat shoved himself headfirst halfway through the hole at the top of one of the hanging clothes boxes, but the humor I found in noticing this hacky sack was another thing altogether.

As this marked our third time PCSing together, I won’t claim we’re experts, but we’ve been down this road twice before.

What’s different this time, is that we had a restricted weight limit for our move. Since we were moving to a particular overseas location, we were allotted approximately 25% of our regular weight for HHG. We never met our full weight limit before, but to have our total weight reduced to a quarter, we needed to cut back on what we had during our previous PCS. Going by what we knew we had in HHG weight three years ago, we started our purge, and kept in mind that we really did need to lose some weight. Half of everything we owned!

Accounting for Former Weight

Since we were basing our estimate on a weight from three years ago, some of that weight had already been purged. For example, everything that used to be in my elementary school classroom that we hauled with us for the first two moves was already cut. Since I wasn’t teaching, it was time to let all of that go—hundreds and hundreds of books aren’t light, you guys! That was a lot of weight we could already mentally count as gone.

We had also already gotten rid of a couch. A broken couch. The verdict is still out on which one of us broke that couch, but any chance my husband gets, he will tell you it was me. As for me and the kitties, we retain our stance that cuddling never hurt anything—not even the footrest portion of a reclining couch.

So loads of books and a full-sized couch were gone. That was a good chunk of weight we didn’t have to consider anymore.

Planning Other Weight Cuts

Next up, we planned out what furniture could go. We thought we might end up in a smaller place overseas, so we thought about what we could do without.

We figured we didn’t need our dressers, my elliptical machine, or our king-sized bed. Coming to terms with letting go of the elliptical and our bed was hard for me.

The elliptical was mine, and even though it was by no means necessary, it was convenient, and I’ll repeat, it was mine. I never had to worry about what I looked like when I got on it or how loud I blasted my fabulous mostly-from-the-nineties playlist. Being honest, I’ll be missing it the whole time we’re over here.

Our bed was the nicest, most expensive item we owned. We purchased it together after getting married, and it made me feel like a grown-up—owning real furniture. When we purchased it, we said we’d have that mattress for at least 10 years before thinking about buying a different one. It wound up only lasting five or six. It didn’t seem to make sense to send a giant bed over when we had no idea if it would fit in our new home.

(This is also the first time we weren’t necessarily looking around for a home ourselves. We planned to live on the installation, so it’s a little different than measuring your giant bed and comparing the size of it to floor plans while you hunt around town for a place.)

Getting settled in our new home, I’m glad we didn’t bring that king-sized bed. Possibly it would have fit, but it would have made for a cramped bedroom.

To deal with not having dressers was fairly easy. I purchased some cloth storage bins for us, and everything that couldn’t be hung up went into the bins.

Other furniture we decided to give up was based on if we thought we could replace it or do without. We planned on using our TV trays instead of our dining table, and we planned on buying a new couch to replace the futon we’d been using since, ahem, someone broke the other real couch. The futon and dining table were weight gone.

Deciding What Weight to Keep

For the rest of our purge, items were kept or let go based on either how much we used them or how sentimental they were.

Based on use, I kept almost everything in our kitchen. Our sentimental items mostly wound up being weight that we kept but didn’t ship. We chose to leave these items with a friend back home in the states for safe keeping.

Little items like clothing, books, games, and DVDs got sorted through and pared down.

Processing the Purge

Getting back to that little plump and unremarkable hacky sack though, I’m still loving its humor.

Today I spent two hours wiping down kitchen cabinets, hand-washing dishes (why do I even bother owning items with such tedious care requirements?), and unloading the dishwasher. Those two hours were enough to warrant having lunch and getting lost in my writing! I sat here, surrounded by our boxes full of so much stuff, and noticed that little hacky sack.

I have no idea where the hacky sack came from or what it means. My knowledge of it consists of knowing that it’s my husband’s. Maybe it’s important, maybe it isn’t. I’m sure I’ll find out when I show him this writing piece, but it’s actually inspiring.

As I looked at the boxes around me, I knew there were items inside them that were mine. My husband would think the same exact thoughts about them just as I thought about his hacky sack.

What is this? Where did it come from? Why is she still hanging onto it and bringing it thousands of miles across the world? Is it important, or did it just get overlooked in the purge? Was it important for a moment a few months ago and now it’s just another annoying part of all of the stuff to unpack and put away?

And so, I sat here. Writing. Smirking. Not unpacking.