Sun Family in Spain

In addition to getting all of our paperwork together and submitted for translation so it would all be ready when we arrived in Spain to submit we had to get our lives ready. We were mid landscaping project, needed to get a shed to store our stuff, clean out a storage shed in another city, pack, do a few repairs on our house, etc. It was total chaos.

I started by listing some big items on Marketplace that I knew we wouldn’t need or use like our kayaks, some furniture, sporting goods, kitchen items. Then I will pack one space at a time. When we move I usually go through the kitchen first and pack all the things I only use occasionally like table decorations, specialty cooking appliances like fondu pots, waffle irons, cupcake sheets, rolling pins and anything I don’t use much. After that I start by cleaning out my closet and packing anything that is off season. We were moving in the summer and we were moving to a hot part of Spain so I purged a lot of torn and worn clothes as well as things I just don’t wear. Then I edited down winter clothes to a few nice sweaters and a few ski items that I would use but I got rid of most everything else. I then packed all of my cold weather clothes I was going to take in a bag we planned to ship. We bought used suitcases at the second hand store. Most of them we bought for between $15 and $25 dollars. I did buy one new carry on roller bag because I wanted something to use on our trips inside Europe.

Every day I would pack a closet or a room. Our house in Denver is small and we had just moved from Trinidad back to Denver in May of 2024 so I had already purged a lot of things. By going room by room it made the big packing easy. We knew our apartment in Spain was furnished and small so we packed a lot of boxes to ship eventually, if and when we buy a house and we want to bring over a container of stuff. We also boxed up stuff to keep at the house if either of our kids or if we ever move back. We bought a shed to be able to store things like tools, sporting goods, kitchen items, and furniture. Initially I wanted to rent our house furnished but we didn’t find any tenants interested in a furnished house. I sold a lot of furniture but we kept a few pieces that we like or that we would want if we ever move back.

The storage unit in Trinidad was a big task. We had a lot of restaurant equipment in there from our business that we closed in 2022. I went on the various town Facebook groups and advertised a garage sale. I also called all of the local restaurants and told them what equipment and stuff I had so they knew we were coming and what we had so they could be ready for when we came to town. We rented a truck and drove down then set up a garage sale for two days. During the garage sale I would post more stuff on market place and I kept posting on the community pages with photos of the things we had available. In the end we sold all of the equipment but one piece. We sold most of our stuff including an expensive large custom made bar height table. I was happy to sell it because it was a special piece but because of its size it needed a specific buyer.

When we got to Denver I sold the last piece of restaurant equipment to a restaurant reseller and we sold a little more of the stuff in a garage sale that we had at our house the following weekend. I looked into and estate company but they wanted $3000 off the top then split the proceeds of what was left. I didn’t have a lot of stuff so I decided to do it myself. If I had a big house with a lot of stuff I probably would have hired an estate company. I hosted one garage sale and posted it on all the local yard sale Facebook pages as well as on Next door. I also posted individual items on marketplace to drive more traffic. This worked great. At the end of day two I put away anything that still had value then I posted that everything left was free and a bunch of people came and took nearly everything I had left. I ended up with one small carload of stuff to donate at the end. I would highly recommend posting on the buy nothing pages for anything you can’t sell that you don’t want to keep.

The final days before we left I packed up the last of the stuff we were using and we finished packing the bags we planned to ship. The last of our furniture we put in the shed and the garage and left. It was two months and one day from when we got back from our summer trip to Spain and Italy and we got back on a plane to return to Spain. We completed all of our visa paperwork, packed up a house, cleaned out a storage unit, got a shed built and finished a big landscaping project. It was a huge undertaking but I think having to do it in such a short amount of time was kind of good because we couldn’t procrastinate. I had daily tasks and just power through.

We shipped ourselves about six bags, now that we are in Spain I think we shipped some of the wrong stuff. I shipped some clothes, but I wish we would have shipped some good flat sheets and towels. You can buy bedding here but sizes and quality of bedding is a little complicated so I think a few flat sheets of my favorite sheets would have been nice. We shipped some hand tools but the hardware store is pretty cheap so I am not sure it was worth shipping those, we ended up having to buy a hammer and a couple of screw drivers anyway because our bags got delayed. My husband shipped a bunch of bags, I have no idea why. I wish we would have shipped some family photos or a few pieces of our art to make the house feel a little more homey. I shipped some spices and my only regret is that I didn’t ship a little more. I have found spices but not some that I often use, especially for Indian and South Asian food. I wish I would have packed a few more shirts for myself. I hate to shop and I am a little intimidated to try and find my size here. I know I will be able to find stuff because there are a lot of northern Europeans here, but it is still intimidating and I would like to put it off a lot longer.

We haven’t been here long enough for me to know what I am going to miss. I think with time I will learn to adapt to the different products in the stores and figure it out. When we eventually buy a house I will hopefully have a better idea of what I want to ship over.