Moving Abroad? All The Household Items You Need to Pack
Every single one of these items I bring with me for an easier and more comfortable life.
Moving internationally means, ideally, selling off (most of) your belongings and starting fresh in the new country. After all, who wants to lug around an oversized sectional while spending tens of thousands of dollars doing so?
Most of the time, I’d highly recommend parting ways with what you’re not emotionally attached to, and if there is anything larger that is especially important, to give it to a relative, or place it in storage. If you really can’t live without it, then yes, bring it with you, but just know it can be a massive headache importing it (and very costly). Don’t even get me started on importing a vehicle, as few things are as migraine-inducing (not to mention the number of alterations you’ll need to make to ensure it’s street legal in Europe).
Now, with all of that said, there are a handful of household items I would suggest you bring with you. I’ve lived in a number of countries, and every time, I’ve run into specific homegood issues. Granted, I haven’t moved to the UK or Japan, but in my own experience, and after talking with others, the issues I have are almost always universal.
So, to help, I’ve compiled a list of items to bring with you on your international move. These will make your life easier and more comfortable. Each of these objects I’ve personally used. As is the case with my other recommendation lists, this article does include some Amazon affiliate links, but it lets me keep the article free (and I’ll never push anything I don’t like).
Cotton (Jersey) Sheets
Bedding around the world sucks.
There’s really no other way to put it. The bedding is almost always highly synthetic, and those polyester blends just don’t feel great against the skin. Also, many countries don’t have universal mattress sizes, so sheet shopping is a pain. The fitted sheets might somewhat work, though the elastic leaves much to be desired, and the regular sheet is almost always too tall or too wide, so you have to buy something that’s massively oversized, and you end up with so much extra fabric it looks like the guy wearing a business suit that’s punched up at the waist.
While blankets take up too much space, I highly recommend bringing a set of full-sized sheets. Not many countries have king-sized beds (they exist, but are rare). I’d say probably 90% of the time, the mattresses I’ve used, from South America to Eastern Europe, have been around the size of a full-sized mattress. The remainder of the time,s the mattress has been smaller, though that’s something you can generally avoid.
I recommend these sheets because they are very comfortable, durable, and affordable. I know everyone loves to talk about high-tread count Egyptian sheets, but these cotton jersey sheets are super comfy, and if something were to happen to them ,you wouldn’t have an issue. You can easily wash them with the rest of your t-shirts, and they are durable as well.
Trust me on this one. Unless you’re moving to a handful of Western European countries or somewhere in Japan or maybe South Korea, do yourself a favor and have at least one pair of these sheets on standby.
Manual Coffee Grinder
I’m still surprised at how long it can take to track down an electric coffee grinder in some countries (even those that sell whole coffee beans). It’s even worse when you travel between countries, as constantly flipping through converters to plug your grinder in is annoying. I have various converters (I’ve reverenced several in some of my previous recommendation articles), but I like to keep those stationary when possible. I’ll plug them in with a projector or in the bathroom and leave them. Needing to flip through different adapters and such for my morning cup of Joe just doesn’t do it for me.
To cut out all that hassle I opt for a manual coffee grinder. Yes, it takes a little bit of forearm work, but that’s alright. It’s so much easier to travel with, takes up less space than an electric one, and it means one less device I have to track down an adapter for.
If you really want to go all out, I’d suggest grabbing a metal pour over coffee filter. Usually I like a French press, but traveling with such a large (usually thin) piece of glass is not recommended. With the pour-over metal filter you pretty much have everything you need to make a quality cup of coffee.
Cheap Back-Up Cell-Phone
If you’ve ever had your cell phone lost or stolen in a foreign country, you know just how much of a nightmare it is to recover everything.
I had my cell phone ripped out of my hand in Buenos Aires. Walking out of a restaurant, I pulled my phone out to check the license plate of an ordered Uber. A motorcycle was pulling up onto the sidewalk, which is very common as many mobile deliveries ar emade this way, only this guy didn’t stop. He snatched the phone out of my hand and was two blocks down the road by the time I figured out what happened.
That was only the beginning of the nightmare. In most countries, electronics from Samsung and Apple come with a hefty import fee. It’s why you might see a group of travelers from Asia or the Middle East leaving an Apple store with four laptops and a half-dozen bags. It’s not that they are crazy loaded, it’s that the prices in the US might be half of what they’d pay back home.
To replace my stolen cell phone in Argentina I would have had to pay a thousand bucks above the original retail price. I ended up dropping $700 for the cheapest phone option…one that costs around $250 in the States.
When living abroad, you really need to live by the rule of Murphy’s Law. If you’re not familiar, the “law” is a saying that suggests if something can go wrong, it will. And when living abroad, if something goes wrong, it is far more difficult to deal with.
That is why I’d suggest getting a cheap back-up phone in the off chance something happens. Because the real problem is that you won’t be able to access any of your bank accounts via two-step authentication without a phone, so having your only cell phone stolen can, very literally, be one of the worst things to happen.
There are perfectly suitable sub $200 Android phones out there. And yes, I understand, as an Apple user you probably just audibly groaned. But it’s a temp phone for when you can get back to the states or somewhere.
— Just make sure to buy a phone that supports eSIM. This way, you can wirelessly download your phone number onto the phone.
Measuring Cups and Spoons
There are a handful of things you simply don’t think about when moving abroad. How you’ll cook a family-favorite recipe isn’t one of them. But even if you are able to track down all the ingredients (never a guarantee), you’ll have an even worse time trying to find measuring cups and spoons that are imperial and not metric.
And let me tell you, trying to convert tablespoons can get confusing. What do you mean one tablespoon is 14.7868 militers. How am I supposed to measure that?
Perhaps you’ll get lucky and will stumble onto US measuring utensils, but chances are, you’ll either need to order them from a specialty store (i.e. expensive), or you won’t find them anywhere.
Trust me, when it comes time for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, it’s far easier to just have a set of measuring cups and spoons on hand.
Multi-Tool
When I moved to Peru, one of the first things I did was take a shower. I wanted a long, hot shower, after a day of travel (and just as long picking up the dogs from import). Unfortunately, fate had another idea, as the hot water handle broke off. It was a shotty installation that I couldn’t do anything about, but the multi-tool on hand at least let me close off the water valve. Otherwise it would have been running for however long it took the owners to stop by (and, as they never fixed the shower, I’m guessing that would have been a while).
This is basically like a Swiss Army Knife on steroids. The screwdriver features are more durable, and the pliers option is indispensable. Things will break while you’re traveling and living in various places, and trying to find screwdrivers and various tools is a hassle. Thankfully, this kind of device is super easy to travel with. Just don’t put it in your carry-on. It WILL get snatched.
Printer Paper
I’m not including a link for this one, because it’s something you can grab before leaving and there’s no sense in ordering it. However, if you plan on mailing any kind of official government documents (such as tax forms), one thing you’ll discover is default paper sizes are slightly different everywhere else in the world.
In the U.S., it’s 8.5 inches by 11 inches. However, as most of the world uses the metric system, the default paper is slightly thinner and taller. If you’re trying to fill out tax forms this becomes a problem. The last thing I want is for my paperwork to be flagged, and so if the government agencies fed my ill-fitting papers into a scanning machine (or however they do it), the tax forms won’t line up correctly.
But really, this goes for any kind of government form. You don’t need a ton of paper. After all, a full ream of paper is surprisingly heavy. Instead, I’d pack 100 sheets or something in an envelope, kind of as a “just incase” pile. Much like measuring sticks, it’s difficult to know ahead of time whether you’ll be able to track this kind of paper down. I was able to find it in Lima at a specialty shop. However, I couldn’t for the life of me locate it in Buenos Aires (surprisingly enough, it was far harder to find just about everything outside of steak, wine, and fernet in Argentina than in Peru).
