Lessons Learned

Many people have written about things to do after a fire and before.

Here are three things I wish I had done before the fire that would have made things a LOT easier in the first couple of months afterward:

1. I wish I had finished cataloging the books, videos and music. I had time last summer, but decided to put it off until this summer. At a minimum, I should have taken photos that recorded, in some way, the titles of everything.
2. I wish I had made a list of the items that went into the storage locker. My stomach gets tied up in knots sometimes, not knowing what I stashed there and thinking it might have been in the house (truthfully, if I don’t know for sure, I have to assume it was).
3. I wish I had been more diligent about giving things away regularly. I had THREE bags of professional clothes ready to go, but hadn’t taken the time to get them to someone who could use them. I had other items waiting to into the storage locker for storage until next autumn that just needed to be moved…

In no particular order, here are some things I wish about on an almost-daily basis right now.

• I wish I had known that what I really needed was a friend to go with me every single day and do “just one wall” of inventory. When the insurance company’s hired folks turned out to have done a very sloppy job, I should have asked for help instead of feeling badly for asking… I did ask some, but felt guilty about asking for as much as I really needed.
• I wish that I had made lists as I walked through specifically of the items I wanted to go back in to recover. In the aftermath of the demolition I realized there were several things I had intended to retrieve that never made it out.
• I wish that I had moved more plants away from the house sooner. I have lost some items that were in pots due to big machines moving around (thought they were far enough away, but no). And some of the larger plants, too, probably should have been moved (I will try to move them but might not have the time now).
• I wish that Tom and I had really sat down very early on in the process and talked about the type of house, the things we each need and want, and what we really want to be able to do in the house in the future.
• I wish that I had been pushier about some things, not so pushy about others, and asked more questions more often.
• Of course, I wish I had unplugged that heating pad…

The other wishes, longings, regrets…

I’ll write a more detailed description of some of the things that I will be doing from this point forward as I get my head around it. In the meantime, here is a suggestion for anyone who reads this blog: take a still photograph of EVERY wall in your home.

Make sure you include all the major items. Make the pics clear enough that you can at least count “how many” even if you cannot read titles. For particularly special and heirloom-ish items, take a separate picture of each item, maybe from several angles. LABEL EACH PICTURE with the date, the room and any pertinent details. If you don’t have the equipment or time to stage still pictures, then a video tour of the room would do. Put a copy of the pictures either “in the cloud” (google’s picasa or similar online storage) and/or send a copy to someone who doesn’t live with you.

Perhaps you will never need this. But if you do, even an out-of-date picture is better than nothing.