Moving Preparations Continue

"Oh my gosh, what on earth are you doing with that enormous pile of batteries?"

Um, yeah...this is one of those fine-print sorts of things they don't tell you about having young kids while in the military.

You know all those cool toys my kids have? The various Christmas, birthday, "gosh, I've missed you" gifts? The "congratulations on potty training", "Preschool graduation" and "You were good today at Target" gifts?

So many of those toys have batteries, and when you have a commercial mover coming in 2 weeks to pack up your stuff, you want to start early on the quest to get as many of those batteries removed as possible.

The packers/movers don't remove the batteries...you do. When the packer comes across something with batteries...if they're nice they'll give you a chance to remove the batteries so it can get packed with everything else. If they aren't nice, they quietly set the item aside and continue packing around it...and before you know it, Jake's bedroom is full of sealed boxes with one Lamaze lullaby toy lying in the corner.

What you're looking at in the picture is a view down into a plastic storage bin of batteries. The bin is about 1/2 full, and these are all the batteries EXCEPT for the boys' GeoTrax and Tomy "Blue Track" Thomas the Tank Engine sets. Those two train sets will probably triple what I've already removed...but the boys are still playing with those sets at least daily, so I'll wait until just a couple days before the packers come before I tackle that.

The bin currently contains 79 batteries. Most of which are AAs, not enough of which are rechargables. Most of our rechargables are in the GeoTrax, thank heavens.

Also, I came across at least a dozen corroded batteries, so those are discarded.

Ugh.

And let's not forgot those other "illegal-to-pack" items: light bulbs, cash (i.e., the contents of my boys' piggy banks), and liquids.

Back to work!