Countdown! Less than 90 Days to Becoming Expats

Things have been pretty crazy around my house recently, but in a good way. My husband and I are planning to move from Florida to Panama in February, so we’re now officially within 90 days of our target date.

We can’t completely nail it — yet — because we need to find a tenant for our house and agree on a lease date. We’re aiming for February 1, 2012, and proceeding as if that date is written in stone. Even though it’s not.

Over the next three months, I’ll share some of our craziness with you. I’ll update this page every week to let you know what we’ve accomplished (or completely missed) during that week.

Of course, your countdown may be different. If you’re selling a house, for example, your steps will be different. If you have kids, that adds a layer of complicaton I don’t have — and if you don’t plan to move any pets, your countdown will be simpler than mine.

Also, keep in mind we’ve already done a lot of preparation. Over the past two years we’ve been cleaning, sorting, donating, selling and otherwise getting rid of stuff. Last year, we started making repairs and improvements to the house to make it more marketable. So we’re not exactly starting this countdown from scratch.

Week of November 6

House Repair

This week we started the last big repair job on the house before we list it to rent. And, as usually happens, the job turned out to be bigger, more complicated and more time consuming than anticipated.

The job is replacing cracked and damaged bathroom tile around the window. We had planned to have it finished this weekend, but in fact, we can’t complete it for at least another 10 days because we had to special order the tile. And it won’t arrive until November 23.

That’s ok, because the prep is more complicated than we expected. Did you know that before 1960, most tile was stuck on with cement? We sure didn’t. . .

Packing and Organizing

I was able to pack up several boxes of music books. I’m donating one (instructional books for piano and violin) to a music teacher, storing one, and selling the third.

I also packed up the contents of a small set of drawers. I threw out a lot of stuff, set aside a couple of items, and boxed up the rest to sell.

Selling Stuff

I listed some seasonal collectibles for sale on Craigslist (here and here, if you’re interested.) Not wildly optimistic since Craigslist hasn’t been very productive for us recently, but figured it was worth a shot in the run-up to Christmas.

Moving the Pets

The one part of the move that has me more worried than anything else is getting our three dogs from here to there. This week I’ve spoken with several airlines, and it looks as though American will be our airline of choice for this particular flight, simply because of their pet handling. I’ll keep you posted on that as we progress.

Maintaining our Lives

Of course, through all this we still need to work, shop for groceries, pay bills and all the normal tasks of everyday life. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just stop all that and focus on preparing for the move? And, of course, the holidays. . . It’s going to be an interesting three months, for sure.

What’s the most daunting task you face in preparing for your move overseas? Leave a comment. . .

See all of the Countdown! posts here.