From South Africa to Canada: Deciding What to Ship, Sell or Leave Behind

The decision about what to ship to Canada from South Africa gets made over a weekend: what goes in the container, what goes on Gumtree, what goes in a bin bag. Nobody tells you that the real cost of that Saturday afternoon is the roughly three months most families spend living without whatever they packed, while it's somewhere on the ocean.

Why the wait matters more than the packing list

This is the detail that should drive most of the decisions, more than any single item's value. Whatever you pack goes into a shipping container that typically takes weeks to reach a Canadian port, then more time clearing customs before delivery. During that entire stretch, you're furnishing a new life with whatever you brought in your suitcases, or buying cheaply as you go. Anything you'll need in your first month in Canada — bedding, basic kitchen items, weather-appropriate clothing — belongs in a suitcase or air freight, however much cheaper the container is per kilogram.

Why most appliances don't make the cut

Mostly no, and this is the single most common shipping regret. South Africa runs on 220–240V power; Canada runs on 120V. A South African appliance plugged straight into a Canadian outlet either won't work at all or will run wrong — motors spin at the wrong speed, heating elements underperform. A step-down transformer can work for some electronics, but it's an ongoing cost and hassle for something that would simply plug in and work if bought locally instead. For anything with a motor or heating element — kettles, toasters, most kitchen appliances — the shipping cost and the risk of it simply not working properly add up to more than buying new in Canada.

The braai exception

This one's more defensible than the appliance question, because a solid braai has no voltage to worry about — it's steel. Whether it's worth the container space comes down to how much you'd miss it versus what an equivalent costs to buy or build in Canada, and how much other volume it's competing with in your allowance. It's a fair candidate for the "ship it" pile in a way a kettle simply isn't.

What people wish they'd shipped

The regret pattern is fairly consistent: people undersell things with genuine sentimental or practical weight — solid wood furniture, tools collected over years, family items that can't be replaced at any price — because in the rush of a moving weekend, everything gets triaged by resale value instead of what it would actually cost to feel settled again on the other side.

A rough rule worth applying

The short version, sorted by category: anything electrical with a motor gets sold or left behind. Anything irreplaceable, sentimental, or made of solid material with no voltage dependency: ship it if the volume allows. Everything you'll need in the first month: it travels with you.

Cape2Canada's blog covers more of the practical first-90-days logistics — worth a look while you're still deciding what goes in which pile.