We were lucky enough to find an opportunity to teach exactly where we wanted to live, so now all we had to do was move. Easy enough, right?
Most moves involve renting a moving van or hiring someone to take all your worldly possessions across the country, but when you move 400 miles away from the National road system, it’s not that easy. My first quote involved getting a giant cube that we could load up and have everything shipped ahead of us to Anchorage, still 400 miles from our final destination. A quote of $15,000 made me realize that we were going to need to be very creative with our move. Loana and I realized what this meant. We had to reduce the contents of a 1,800 sq ft house into what would fit into many 18 gallon Rubbermaid totes. Time to get an Amazon Prime membership!
Rubbermaid totes are the favorite method of getting your stuff to the Alaskan bush in one piece. There are videos on Youtube that demonstrate how to drill holes all the way around and secure the lid with zip ties once it is loaded up. We were limited to tote sizes that would be reasonable for Bush pilots to handle in their single engine planes. The post office has a limit of 70 pounds but under 50 is far more encouraged. Every single tote that we mailed up would travel to our new home in the tiny cargo hold of various small planes that visit our new home. I packed up my first tote, 45 pounds. I secured the sides with zip ties and took it to my nearest post office to get an estimate, $94.27!!! Wow was all I could think. Some quick mental calculations made me realize we had to get rid of almost everything we owned to make this move possible. We would also need to do this while still living in our house, down to the last couple of days before we finally left on the adventure of our lifetimes.
Southern Belle On Ice 