he's chasing dreams hitting seams.
she's chasing dreams talking sports.
Including our move from Texas, we’ve moved five times this year…wow & yikes all in the same breath. (Yes I know technically the year isn’t over yet but we’re finished moving until after spring training. Well hopefully *knock on wood* a trade could always happen that could send us to FL ST. Anyway we’ll face that if it comes about.) Packing is my number two thing on the list of I HATE — right below Alabama football. :) So me hating packing with all my being is hilarious since ya know we’re living this baseball life where we don’t know where we will be called to tomorrow. But with all the moving, we’ve (had no choice but to) learned ways to make the process a little easier. I wanted to share those things in case someone is reading who is about to embark on the baseball life or other moving-often-lifestyle. Disclaimer: I’m nowhere near an expert. This is just my first year, but I know these things have helped. Also, it will be fun to document other things I learn as we continue this baseball journey. 1) Get the BIGGEST vehicle you can. When we left for 2017 spring training we were in my Chevy Cruze. The car was so packed we had to put stuff in the passenger floorboard, and I sat indian style the whole trip. HA! We traded for a Dodge Durango in May, and that has been one of the best decisions we’ve made. Not just for all the extra room but for the comfort as well. Comfort makes driving across country all the time more bearable. We’ve already put over 10,000 miles on the Durango if that gives you prospective on how much we drive. And of course adding Grainger in the mix the more room the better. (G is probably the most comfortable on her pillow on top of all the stuff.) 2) Get a luggage rack/bag/carrier for the top of the vehicle We went with the Keeper off of Amazon and had no problems with it after driving close to 30 hours with the bag on top. We also hit some heavy rain, and the stuff in the bag stayed dry. We fit two medium suitcases and two of Matt’s Dodger long, duffle bags in the luggage bag. (Make sure to check your vehicle racks first. We were in a crunch, ordered a great one, but we didn’t take a look at what our rails were like on the Durango. Our bars don’t stretch out far enough for the bag to fit in between —like the bag is made to do. But nothing some bungee cords can’t fix!) We went with a bag instead of the hard carrier because bag is easier to store. But we did have to take the bag off and put back on when we stopped overnight. The luggage bag just freed up even more space inside the car for us, but you also do not realize how much stuff you need and want when traveling basically full time. The room gets small quickly, but with the Durango and luggage bag, we were able to fit plenty of things in our car. Which is basically what happens in baseball life — you take what you can fit in your car. 3) Don’t bring all your clothes. Don’t even bring what you THINK you need. This was definitely my biggest mistake. I brought WAY TOO MANY clothes. (And what’s even worse probably is what I brought wasn’t even half of what I own…) My thinking was, “oh well I might need this dress on this occasion” and “oh if I get a job I’ll need all these clothes.” Well what happened is said occasion didn’t happen, and I didn’t need all those work clothes. So a lot of the stuff I had to pack and unpack weren’t even worn. So when we stopped at my parents’ house after the season I left two tubs worth of clothes at home. Because let’s be real I can get by with a blazer, nice pants and dressy casual shirts for work. And if I need something for some kind of occasion I can get my mom to mail me something I need. But I did bring two, dressy dresses to have to ease my mind just in case. Luckily Matt doesn’t have an overabundance of items except baseball things but can’t really leave those behind. But guys if you have too many shoes or something equivalent to ladies overabundance of clothing, you’ll have to realize and downsize too. All of that can be summed up into I’m learning just how little I can get by with. What we’ve done several times is gather together everything we think we want/need and downsize from there…and if it doesn’t all fit downsize again. We’ve done that a few times, but hopefully we have all our stuff together now. 4) Get plastic tubs You can get tubs of all sizes at the Dollar Store, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. You can see the blue ones and the clear one in the picture. The tubs are great for miscellaneous things like kitchen supplies, boxes of random things, etc. I have the clear one for clothes. The tubs give organization, eliminate trips to and from the car and save space. 5) Makes notes and take pictures on how packed I just started doing this as we were moving to Arizona but am thinking it’ll make packing up for the season easier and less time consuming because will know how everything fit last time. I’m sure there are other things we’ve learned, but these are the biggest! If you’re reading and have other things that have helped moving easier, please comment below! I’ve heard veteran WAGS talk about being packing pros, and I’m patiently waiting to feel that way. Head over to the VLOG page to check out the moving vlog!
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Matt & Jesica BeatyWelcome in to dreams and seams! A tell-all blog about our career dreams and path to reaching those dreams with some commentary about sports and life plus some videos too. "Strive for the impossible because it makes the possible seem effortless." -Matt Beaty Categories
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