Ship or Store?
The house in Cyprus is sparsely furnished; mostly by a well-known Swedish furniture retailer. We felt this was perfectly adequate for a holiday home, and why not for our full-time home? We resolved to store our UK furniture, rather than ship it, and obtained several quotes.
Wow!
Once revived, I resolved to consider alternatives. I had no idea that storage space was so expensive.
Having decided that the car was coming with us, the alternative was clear. We could combine space for the furniture and ship it with the car. We obtained quotes to ship some, or all of our furniture. Not cheap, but as we had discovered, storing furniture was not cheap either.
There began a process of frantic measuring. Would our bed fit? What about our giant American fridge-freezer? Where would that live?
Reality Check
Accidentally, we had arrived at a new place emotionally. Initially, coming to Cyprus was ‘an experiment‘. An extended sabbatical, if you will. Mags had agreed a nine month career break from her employer. This gave us a nice escape clause. We could go, and then, as a nine month deadline approached, make a decision as to whether we came home to resume “normal” life, or continue to build a new normal for ourselves in the sun.
Then, Mags’ employer announced that they were closing the store where she worked. Subtly, this changed the dynamic. Of course, if we are not enjoying life in Cyprus, we can come home. However – with the nine month clause gone, we could look at expenses a bit differently. Shipping our furniture out and back within a year would be very expensive. If we stayed longer however, well, it became progressively better value, the longer that we stayed.
Both in terms of the spreadsheet and on the emotional ledger, shipping our furniture changed the calculation.
