Ah, the romantic notion of moving your family to exotic India...
Before traveling to India with your family... for 2 years... there are many decisions. Decisions with many possible answers. Each item you consider has a litany of options. Each choice adds to the weight of the decision to move abroad... Do we keep the house? sell the house? rent the house? Hire someone to manage the house? rent the house and manage it ourselves?..from India? Have a friend manage the house for us?.... The solution for this landed in our laps... a co-worker who happens to have just moved to the US... from India... agreed to rent our house. We are even more fortunate because she is really - well, almost - house-sitting for us. Most of our furniture and household items, our plants, will remain with her under her care. Although this seems like a convenient solution it leads to the next series of decisions...
What to keep in the house under the care of a relative stranger? What to store? what to donate? what to sell? What to take with us? If we take it with us do we ship it (knowing we won't have access to it right away) or do we place it in one of our 8 giant suitcases so we can get to it sooner? With children these questions lead to the dilemma of... toys - are they too old for some of them? if so do we store them in the attic for posterity? Do we give them away or donate them.. if the kids aren't too old for them do we store them for their return? Do we take them with us? (the toys) And then of course... do they go in the air shipment or our 8 giant suitcases? This leads us to the same questions with the children's clothing. You can see how tedious this becomes. The questions are endless.
Keep the car or sell the car? have someone use your car as a loaner? store your car?... Bills? How do you keep paying them on time? (the Internet has made this a lot simpler.) Managing your mail? managing your bank accounts? Managing your family's reactions to the idea of moving to a place like India?
It all gets a bit overwhelming at times. But then, of course, the romance of moving to India has a way of filtering back into our thoughts.
Before traveling to India with your family... for 2 years... there are many decisions. Decisions with many possible answers. Each item you consider has a litany of options. Each choice adds to the weight of the decision to move abroad... Do we keep the house? sell the house? rent the house? Hire someone to manage the house? rent the house and manage it ourselves?..from India? Have a friend manage the house for us?.... The solution for this landed in our laps... a co-worker who happens to have just moved to the US... from India... agreed to rent our house. We are even more fortunate because she is really - well, almost - house-sitting for us. Most of our furniture and household items, our plants, will remain with her under her care. Although this seems like a convenient solution it leads to the next series of decisions...
What to keep in the house under the care of a relative stranger? What to store? what to donate? what to sell? What to take with us? If we take it with us do we ship it (knowing we won't have access to it right away) or do we place it in one of our 8 giant suitcases so we can get to it sooner? With children these questions lead to the dilemma of... toys - are they too old for some of them? if so do we store them in the attic for posterity? Do we give them away or donate them.. if the kids aren't too old for them do we store them for their return? Do we take them with us? (the toys) And then of course... do they go in the air shipment or our 8 giant suitcases? This leads us to the same questions with the children's clothing. You can see how tedious this becomes. The questions are endless.
Keep the car or sell the car? have someone use your car as a loaner? store your car?... Bills? How do you keep paying them on time? (the Internet has made this a lot simpler.) Managing your mail? managing your bank accounts? Managing your family's reactions to the idea of moving to a place like India?
It all gets a bit overwhelming at times. But then, of course, the romance of moving to India has a way of filtering back into our thoughts.
