Cleaning Up After a Fire

This morning I was talking to my friend Cheryl to arrange getting an old cell phone from her for Glenn to use to replace the old LG that really wasn't working (often had to be on speaker phone to hear/ be heard, etc). She told me that she was going to be helping some friends who had had a fire and wondered if we could meet up there and spend an hour or so helping.

After lunch we headed over there kind of unprepared. I quickly ran home and grabbed some socks, our rain boots and a pair of work gloves. It was really an eye opener for all of us. We got a tour of the house to find out where it was safe for us to be and where it wasn't. The fire had started on the second floor in one of the bedrooms where (from what I understand) too many things had been plugged into an outlet and a cord was pinched somewhere. All of the inhabitants of the house were on vacation - the homeowner was only in Canada for about 24 hours before his kids called him and told him that he had to come home because his house was on fire. His housemates are on vacation in Russia and still don't know about the fire. :(

The kids and I worked for a couple hours, mostly outside, putting burned and water damaged stuff that had been thrown out windows into big trash bags and hauling them to the street. There is still so much more to do but it was all the time that we could manage today.

Here are some of the many thoughts I had as I was putting stuff into trash bags:

1. What would I replace if I lost all my material possessions in a fire? I really have no idea. I was thinking about this in relation to getting rid of stuff that we own/ decluttering. So much of what I keep I keep because I have it not because I need it or really even want it. I want to remember today when I get home from our trip and re-address this thought.

2. We need to get rental insurance. Unfortunately the owner of the home we helped at had just recently paid off his home and his insurance had lapsed :(

3. I want to keep my house in order so that if I need to have emergency personal or friends or strangers come into my home I won't be embarrassed. The house looked like it was lived in and cluttered, not trashy but it made me think that I know that too many days out of the year I would be embarrassed to have anyone walk into my home. That needs to change.

I am sad that we are leaving on our trip on Thursday. I would really like to spend more time over there helping out! There is so much need :(