#27 May 8, 2021 Nomad Packing Detail Resources

May 08, 2021

This Blog Diary has brought up a couple of questions from my friends and readers. One question was posed this way in a text: "Quick question: where did you find your crates?" I responded: "Lol. This is not a quick question!" She then texts: "Oh pooh!" I'm still smiling because of my friend Megan getting right to the source of detailed information that she wanted to use for herself. Megan, being a lifelong teacher, is really great at getting to the significant nuggets she is looking for!

Darrell and I agree that these crates are key to packing our items easily into our truck bed. This was Darrell's vision for packing organization beginning in July 2020. At that time, we still expected to downsize over the following 18 month time period that turned into less than 2 months as we let the speed of our process accelerate.

So here are the nitty gritty details of Darrell's shopping for and purchasing crates, trunks, and utensil boxes. Our July 2020 preparation began with conversations with our 'nomadic kids', Jeremy and Andrea, who currently live in Vancouver, Washington. Besides getting some details from them, we (especially Darrell) have read numerous articles and blogs about Nomadic living. Our son's advice that we immediately began, was to use an app to track our spending. We loaded the free version of Mint, and began tracking our spending in July 2020. This is how we were able to find the information that Megan asked me for.

Darrell measured the truck bed. About this time, he also took our 2021 Honda Ridgeline in for a custom bed cover installation. For this installation, the dealer has to change the tailgate lock mechanism making this a not-so-simple modification.

Next he began shopping online to find crates that would configure to our space and give us the most for our packing and be liftable once filled with weighty items. So with all of these ideas in mind, we have our first workable solutions which we are apt to modify over time. A couple of the boxes are just too heavy for me to lift, as well as some of the latches for the truck cover are a bit difficult to learn and grip and move. I do okay with this for now. Darrell is mostly in charge of moving boxes in and out. Some of our crates are quite lightweight fully packed out with items like coffee and tea.

We purchased 4 black sealing trunks made of shaped plastic from Home Depot Online. These were $114 delivered to our house. We each have one trunk for our off season clothes and any other personal items. We have recently labeled our boxes and crates using a label maker that we like because the stickers don't leave residue and they are neat and readable. The other two crates are for large items like our Vitamix, Instapot, Iron, large oil and soap bottles, etc. These crates are heavy for me, and challenging for me to lift on my own. Three of these fit into our truck bed at the back. The 4th one stows into the locking trunk or as we call it: 'the pit', along with Darrell's tools and a couple of other items.

Darrell found the crates at a web site for this company: Schaeffer Systems International. He ordered 4 in one color and one size shipped to us for $101. Once they arrived, we discovered that the size details were measurments for the insides of the crates. This slight difference made a huge difference to how the crates fit into our truck by the depth. Darrell remeasured the boxes and how they were fitting into the truck, then ordered a second set of 4 in a slightly different smaller size and a different color, and they were still able to stack together. This detail took a lot of finessing and math. Well, Darrell is really great at math and packing and organizing stuff! These 8 crates we assigned to areas of our house. We labeled them for example: Office, Bathroom, Pantry (x3), Travel, Pans, Silverware.

For our utensils, we found 4 boxes to work reasonably well, seemed sturdy and were affordable in the sport sections of Walmart and Cabela's. We put our silverware set in one with dividers, our larger serving pieces and knives in a deeper box with dividers, and then we bought two non-divided boxes for baking items and cooking utensils that we would normally have in a large shallow kitchen drawer. Recently we decided to invest in boxes to fit into our crates. We settled on OXO brand clear containers with push button lids. We bought two sizes of these and currently store items inside these boxes in ziploc bags.

It's been chilly here in Noblesville, Indiana with a mix of rain and sun. We were out for an evening walk when a storm caught us during the last 10 minutes of our walk, then it started hailing!! Thankfully it was small hail! My sisters and Donna, Dad's wife, went to a restaurant in downtown Indianapolis called The Garden Table. It was delicious food and fresh pressed juices! Also went to a Portuguese restaurant in Noblesville called Bica. Really amazing breads and pastries!