Your Shipment Has Been Released By Customs
Shipping our computers through UPS proved catastrophic despite allowing them to custom pack everything, so what then were the odds that all the household goods I packed myself would show up intact?
I've been wondering that for weeks now.
The carefully bubble wrapped glassware, my ceramic tea pot, the vintage IKEA 4 tier plastic sidetable (it was a choice, yes, but I like what I like 😅). As well as I felt I'd packed it, confidence had slipped after the computer carnage.
Adding to that, much of what I'd used to pack and pad everything was our clothing. Had it been sitting in a damp warehouse for weeks collecting mold?? I used vacuum-seal bags for much of it, but had opted to fill in gaps with t-shirts and such as padding to save on plastic waste. Time would tell, if any of this ever finally made it to us.
The back and forth with the shipping company had been drawn out and arduous, fighting the agent at every turn to answer the simplest questions. Two weeks passed from the day the company picked up our boxes before we heard anything from them, and that was after badgering them over emails to no response before getting in touch over phone, where they claimed they lost our contact info. You... you lost our email thread... the one you started.... that we'd been replying to for weeks?? Okay...
Skipping through the weeks, last week we finally received word that everything was at customs. Translating much Dutch, filling out some papers, and three headaches later, an email arrived saying "Your shipment has been released from customs". Everything cleared, and we didn't have to pay 21% import fees (unless there's a hidden, unpleasant surprise waiting for us). Had our shipping company not been able to prove these were personal, household items, customs would have charged us as if they were business related. Biggest sigh of relief.
Eight weeks to the day, here arrived the packages, on our doorstep.
Kind of. They weren't on our doorstep, they were... in someone else's entry way.
The layout of this apartment complex is complex. Nothing marks our door as its number (though for this specific shipment I taped a piece of paper with our number on it in the window), which as you've heard us complain at length, and has made receiving mail an annoyance.
So our packages showed up to the front of the building, where someone signed off for us (???) on what came out to 16k worth of declared goods.
Now is probably the time to note that the total weight of our 15 boxes came in at 1,026 lbs, and we needed to move it all from a door around the corner, through a construction zone, weave through a narrow hallway, to finally get it into our place. Yeah.
I began moving boxes out of someone else's entry way onto the curbside, and Christopher was loaned a wheelbarrow from the construction workers. He'd wheel 1 to 2 boxes back at a time, and drop them off outside our place, then come back for more as I continued moving them out of the hallway.
After a few loads of boxes, one of the construction workers showed up with a second wheelbarrow and helped us move things. Once everything was outside our place, 3 more construction workers swooped it, moved everything in for us, and had everything done in a flash. We cannot thank them enough, they saved us not just a lot of time, but our poor arms.
So what did we dig out first?
SILVERWARE.
You ever notice how diners have very low grade silverware that's just unpleasant to use (or is that just my sensory issues?)? Our pre-furnished apartment has the airbnb-like quality of being minimally stocked, and the provided silverware is just a step up from diner grade. Didn't know I could miss a set of spoons so much, but I did.
In that same vein, we dug out a second mug next. I had packed exactly 1 mug into my carry-on, and boy was I glad I did, because there weren't any here at the apartment. Odd, especially considering there was a coffee pot.
And then the rice cooker. Meesh gifted us an amazing rice cooker as a housewarming gift when we moved into our previous apartment, and it's served us so well. Bless you for ruining pot-cooked rice for me, Meesh, rice cooker rice is actually just that much better.
My recipe box got brought out, the vacuum, a book I was a chapter into when we left, a pair of headphones, a microphone (for online gaming sessions with Christopher's dad and siblings), assorted kitchen items (SO good to have a cheese grater again), computer repair kit (Christopher is finally able to start fixing our PCs!), aforementioned IKEA side table, espresso machine and bean grinder (those were also a previous housewarming gift from the Denny's and Grandma Denny), other computer accessories, two candles, and extra clothing.
Now the big question, what casualties did our goods sustain?
Well, drum roll please...
Surprisingly, none??
I haven't opened absolutely everything, as we know this isn't our long-term place, but I have needed to open most boxes for one or another reason. And so far, not a single thing has been broken or damaged.
There was one post-shipment casualty though, and this one hurt. It was the rice cooker. Prior to moving, we'd bought a few US to EU plug converters. We excitedly plugged in the rice cooker and-
-POP- darkness
Power to the entire apartment shut off, and no amount of flipping breakers in the closet would bring it back.
Thus did our rice cooker die, and we lived without power for a few hours, until we were able to get a hold of someone to come find the issue.
The next day we tentatively tried again, plugging into a different slot, with our espresso machine. It worked!- for a moment, before abruptly shutting everything off, and once more leaving us in darkness. Maurice the maintenance man to the rescue again.
Unlike the rice cooker, our espresso machine is 3-pronged with surge protection, and I am happy to report that it did not give up the ghost after blowing the power. The problem came down to the US to EU adapter being faulty, and the issue was solved by using a different one. Ugh.
But I am now sipping my first iced coffee since being here, our power issue resolved, and our espresso machine working.
So, was the headache and cost worth it all? Well, especially with the declared cost at just over $16k (and that was low-balling quite a bit), yes, yes it was. For a fraction of that, we have our familiar favorites, and do not need to repurchase an array of household goods. Most of what we "left" behind was furniture that was sold or given away (thank you to everyone who took in our items!!), and the biggest thing we brought with us was my bicycle. The only furniture pieces we brought fit into normal moving boxes and amounted to 2 stools and the side table.
We are a happy little family surrounded by all our favorites, feeling a lot more settled and at home. Liara certainly enjoyed sniffing the smells on the boxes, but then sniffing the familiar smells inside the boxes.
It's not so much that we have a lot of stuff, but the stuff we do have was carefully chosen over time and is the stuff that we want. And we're thankful to have it here with us.