living out of a suitcase

My suitcase has just been unpacked for the very first time in over a month. All five of my shirts are lined up nicely in a dresser, next to both pairs of my pants. It feels so good to be pulling the clothes out of an organized drawer rather than the mixed up jumble in my suitcase.

One of our family goals on this trip has been to “live simply”. It might be what we are seeking most in the very core of our hope for this trip. We say it over and over to each other. Back at home, the lines between needs and wants have blurred, and our lives are far from simple.

Now, after being constantly on the move for over one month of traveling around Germany, living out of 3 suitcases for our family of 5, squeezing into tiny 1-bedroom apartments or hotel rooms, living with very little convenient access to Internet, repacking everything into the limited trunk space of our car over and over and over again, I feel it is finally safe to say that we have indeed been living simply.

(Pictured below is all that we came with for the next 9 months. Most of it is car seats and children!)

And I was soooooo ready to unpack that suitcase.

Overall, it has been a good experiment. But humor me with
10 of the reasons I know we have been living out of suitcases for too long:

1. I have reached a new level of expertise at plugging up hotel showers with a plastic bag and a washcloth in order to bathe my children.

2. Among the wadded up balls of wrinkled clothing, I am choosing between a shirt with a spot on the front and a shirt that smells bad.

3. It seems almost everyday we have hot dogs for lunch and hamburgers for dinner. We think we are being creative when we mix it up and instead have hamburgers for lunch and hot dogs for dinner.

4. We have eaten at McDonalds more times in the past month than in our entire 13 years of marriage. Hamburgers, of course. Lunch or dinner, depending on how creative we are feeling.

5. My children have started calling all homes and apartments we visit “the hotel”.

6. I have begun to think of a Nutella sandwich (chocolate hazelnut cream) as a healthy snack. Better than more gummies, at least.

7. I find myself giving the sniff test to every bottle of milk I pour, because the milk has often been out of the refrigerator for far too long.

8. The pink clothes are pinker than ever. So are the whites. We will call them casualties of my husband deciding it was more convenient to launder our clothing in one full load rather than two small loads. Good thing I like pink.

9. The kids have a new hairstyle we have dubbed "car seat head".

10. Instead of asking for Nutella sandwiches, my children have begun to ask for “Hotella” on their sandwiches. It is time to be in a home.


A few days ago we moved into a simple row house with a small backyard and the tiniest little freezer you ever did see. It is clean, and modern, and has plenty of drawers for our meager amounts of clothing. We are rejoicing because it is more space than we have seen in a while. Everyone is ready to have a door to close periodically. It is good to be reminded to rejoice in the little things. It is good to unpack the suitcases.

Below is our road trip at a glance, photo journal style:

Stop A: Stuttgart.  Where I got almost no photos while we recovered from jet lag.

Stop B: Lübeck.  Where Christian's mother was raised. We visited with aunts and uncles and admired the many beautiful spires in this town surrounded entirely by canals.

Stop C: Sylt. The island where we rested for 2 weeks, visited with family, and explored the windy seashore.

Stop D: Denmark. We stayed in the section of Denmark called Fyn, but squeezed in a day trip to Copenhagen. We had the most amazing visit reconnecting with old friends who have triplet daughters that we last saw a few months after their birth - and now these girls are 11! Denmark is another beautiful country with castles and a the tales of history written over building fronts on every corner.

Stop E: Kiel. To hold some windmills, of course. And for a birthday party that reunited cousins and will long be remembered.

Stop F: Rothenburg ob der Tauber. A magnificently midieval city, with its defensive wall still in tact. Sunset was a magical time to walk the wall that runs for a mile and a half around the town center.

There was plenty of ice cream and many ornate town centers along the way...

Stop G: Basel and surrounding area. It is here we will remain for the majority of our time overseas. The suitcases will undoubtedly get packed and unpacked again, but for much shorter weekend jaunts.

Our road trip around Germany was unforgettable. The historical sights were outstanding and the scenery was beautiful, but it is the rekindled relationships that will be long remembered.