It’s actually a little bit shocking how many times clients have told me they’ve had a flood in their home. Sometimes the damage is controlled and sometimes it’s really, really bad. Like move out and live somewhere else bad. Along with the damage to the home comes stress, routines upended, dealing with insurance and financial issues. But what I’m going to write about today is the damage to your stuff.
If you’ve got clutter, if you’ve got piles, if you’ve got stacks on the floor, there’s a good chance your belongings are going to have to go in the garbage depending on the type of flooding you’ve had. If you’ve had a sewage issue, you’re probably not going to want to try to save stuff.
Let’s take a look at a basement as an example today. You go down the stairs to your basement and realize with horror that you’re walking in two inches of water. You’ve meant to go through the things in the basement for years. You’re intentions were long but your time was short and you never made it happen. As you take in the scene, you focus on the cardboard boxes of family photos stacked on the floor-water part way up the boxes, boxes of your childhood keepsakes, piles of your children’s old toys that you meant to box up and your wedding dress hanging from a rack with the bottom soaking wet. You just want to cry. But there’s no time to cry because you need to start making phone calls to get this disaster fixed.
So rewind the scene two years and picture being on top of things in the basement. You’ve worked with a professional organizer, you’ve installed sturdy storage racks from Costco, you’ve gone through the cardboard boxes, purged what you didn’t need and moved contents into sturdy plastic bins with lids and labels. Everything is up and off of the floor, safely stored on the racks. Now you come down the stairs and walk into two inches of water. It’s bad, it’s stressful but your keepsakes are safe. One less thing to worry about when disaster has struck.
Take time now while you’re not under the stress, pressure and upheaval of an emergency. Go through your stuff now and make decisions on what’s really important to you to keep and what you can give away. Honor the things you keep by storing them safely and properly now so they’ll be protected in the years ahead.
.
