Saturday, April 12, 2014

Lists, Packing and checking...

Our goal is to be out of our apartment by mid-June. This enables us to spend time with family and friends prior to flying to Barrow. We are 10 weeks away from our get out of the apartment date. We have been collecting items for a few months to mail to Barrow. We have a list to sell at our favorite flea market, list of things to donate, list of things to trash, list of things to store and list of things still to buy. 


I am a nerd and need to have lists to keep me on track and focused. I made an excel spreadsheet to organize shopping lists, clothing items and to do the very famous Sargent Family Budget Worksheet. I like computers so it didn't take me very long to do this. 

We hit lots of sales! We found the "good" deodorant on sale for 50 cents! We would buy as much as our mad cash fund would allow. We found pasta for cheap and stocked up. End of season sales gave us huge discounts on coats, insulated bibs, boots, gloves and more. Em and I got heated boots on sale at the Columbia outlet for $20! 

We plugged them in and tried them out around the house! They were amazing. I highly recommend these boots. 










Yes, it was a mess to put all our items into 18 gallon tubs. We wanted to balance the weight and keep each tub under 50 pounds. As of this post, we have 6 tubs of food to get us started in Barrow and 2 tubs with cleaning, medicines, and misc items. That's 8 tubs to get started and there's still a few items to buy a ship. I completely forgot to buy canned tomatoes, sugar and flour. 


We shopped for our cold weather gear and rain gear at these places:

The Columbia Outlet Store

Cabela's

Bass Pro Shops - we love fishing!

REI

Field and Stream

Walmart, Target, GAP Clearance Store, Burlington Coat Factory, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Kroger, Flea Markets and more!

We were focused on getting the most bang for our buck. We did not want to skimp on outerwear. Staying warm and dry is the most important thing in the tundra. 



I hope that you enjoy reading about the build up to our Alaskan Adventure!

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