It is really difficult to pack your life into 4 suitcases!

Over the last few week’s we’ve slowly cut back little by little the list of items that would make the final journey with us to New Zealand. Priority has been our camping and sporting equipment as we plan to make full use of it, in addition to the expense of trying to replace it all when we get there.

We also heard clothing is really expensive and shopping isn’t exactly a highlight in New Zealand, so we made it a priority to ensure we purchased and packed work clothes to take with us.

Luckily, since I have traveled a lot for work, I am allowed check 3 bags up to 70lbs at no charge. In order to maximize our belongings we purchased the largest bags we could find. Apparently (although we will see if this theory is true very soon) according to Air Canada, hockey bags seem to fit into a loop hole in their baggage allowance (so Canadian). As long as it contains sporting equipment, there is no size or weight limits! Here’s hoping that service rep was telling the truth! Amazing how much you can fit when you have no reserves on weight or size!

In order to fit all our clothes into 1 bag each, we leveraged the zip lock vacuum seal bags. It’s amazing how much air it sucks out and the space you can save! Hard to believe we managed to get everything in!

So in the end we have 2 large suitcases, 2 hockey bags, 2 carrying on’s and 2 backpacks! Here’s hoping we can actually find a car to fit this all in when we arrive!

PS. In case you’ve noticed my new favorite thing to do is create animated GIFs 🙂