No Open First Box=A Disaster

Making an Open First Box is much like a Survival Kit 

We had finally moved all of our stuff halfway across the continental U.S. Most of it was in storage and in boxes still, but the journey was completed at least.

I always look forward to unpacking. It is sort of like Christmas when you empty all of the moving boxes. Before I get started, I always clean all of the bathrooms, because the thought of someone else's germs freaks me out a little bit.

Then disaster struck.

My open first moving box was missing. An open first box is the box you pack with all the items you will desperately need when you finally arrive to your new location.

The first thing to go wrong was me realizing I couldn't clean the bathrooms. It was very early in the day, and I wasn't sure what would be open yet. I thought, okay it can wait.

Next my two kids started bugging me. Usually in my open first box I would have toys and such to distract them, but as we already know I didn't have this luxury. Imagine as I go from catastrophe to catastrophe a 4 year old 6 year old incessantly bugging me with the all so common "I'm bored" and "he keeps bugging me" and other lovely things us parents somehow tolerate.

It wasn't that big of a deal until little Samuel said, "I'm hungry." I realized that I was too. All my first-day snacks, kitchen utensils and paper plates I had designated were in the open first box.

I realized we would need to go out to explore the new area to get some of the essentials which wasn't something I really could do on my budget. God bless credit cards. I went to get my cell phone out of my purse to pull up Google to help me find places to go buy stuff, but my phone was dead. I bet you can guess where my home phone charger was- in the open first box.

Luckily, I had my car charger out and ready to charge up my phone. Crisis averted, somewhat. I still had to listen to two cranky children while getting lost over and over again in a new area while spending money that I really didn't have to spend.

To this day, I have no idea where my open first box went. I thought I had packed it in the car, but I must have left it. I never found it when we emptied out the storage unit a year later either.

Lesson learned: never, ever forget to bring your open first box with you on a move. Also, if you don't pack an open first box, all of the above could happen to you anyways. I don't know how people can manage with it.