The Art of Packing

In my family, Dad was the "packer".  With great precision and care, he packed everything that we would need to transport over the ocean to Thailand.  He had excellent packing skills.  He was packing in metal barrels.  I remember the rusty look of the barrels and how he carefully wrapped the Corelle dishes, taking great care to keep anything from breaking.  He did that with our books too.  Everything made it to/from Southeast Asia, and I think only one dish got broken through all those years.  He had skills.  He also took the same care with packing when he would get ready for a camping trip.  He would wrap all of his food and supplies, taking care to get them in the smallest packages possible so that he could fit it all in his backpack.  You might say it was obsessive, but it had a goal.  He wanted to take as much as possible in his baggage.  The same was true if he packed for the airplane trips or he packed barrels to ship.

Packing is an art.  It takes a lot of precision to get things to fit the right way and to use the least space.  It is hard to pack right to keep things from getting damaged.  Somehow I picked it up from my Dad, but not through directly being taught.  It is either genetic or came from watching him.  It probably also improves with experience, and I guess I've been moving somewhere a lot in my life.  I know about how full each trunk can be and still meet the 50lb weight limit for the airplane.  I have learned to pack with dessicant packets and plastic to keep things safe for the shipment or for storage.  And I've learned about the art of getting the most possible items in.  Yes, I might border on obsessive about it and I end up with a lot of the packing work for myself, but it has been successful.  And maybe, through watching me, the boys will become packing geniuses.  I'll have to get ready to entrust the job to them some day!   (Dad, thanks for the instruction!)