Nothing like a flood to give perspective!

[Villanelle]

We live in the greater DC area, which was absolutely slammed by flash flooding yesterday.  We ended up with 6 inches of standing water in our basement, though thankfully it drained quite quickly and is empty (but far from dry!) now.

We have a shipment of furniture (stored on the military's dime while we lived overseas) that has been repeatedly delayed.  In that are several sets of garage shelving, which we intended to use to get everything off the ground in case of flooding.  Sadly, the flood happened before the shelves arrived.  Still, we are pretty fortunate that nothing precious was damaged, and that our renters insurance will cover everything.

A textile restoration guy is here as I type (sent by the insurance company) and as I'm showing him the fabric and rug items that were damaged, I realize that with every item I'm thinking "I hope they can't clean this, I'd rather have the cash."  And that makes me realize just how much stuff I have that I not only don't need, but also don't even care about. 

I think we do fairly well with both frugality and restraint, but this shows we definitely have a ways to go!

[Candace]

Sorry about your flood! The mustachian perspective is pretty amusing though.

Best of luck getting the settlement you want.

[afuera]

Our entire house flooded during Hurricane Harvey 2 years ago.  It definitely makes it easier to declutter when you have to look at everything you own and determine if its worth the effort/time to try and restore or worth the $$ to replace.

[fattest_foot]

We live in Ridgecrest, and it's definitely given us some perspective.

We toyed with just up and leaving our jobs and house. It'd be a financial hit, but we'd survive easily.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the housing market will collapse in the coming year, and so no matter what we'll probably hurt on selling our house. But in the end? No really a big deal.

[Better Change]

Yep, nothing strips you down like a flood or a house fire.  We lived in a VERY flood-prone area for six years and had our basement flood a whopping three weeks after we bought our home there.  Thankfully we were able to fix biggest issues (gutters, sumps, etc.) before the next record-setting flood four years later.  Most of the residents didn't remember or weren't around for the great flood of '86 and were absolutely devastated by the one in 2017.  Some homes were total losses.

We saw a huge house fire in our new location where there is no city sewer available and thus no fire hydrants.  It took four fire departments quite a while to fill makeshift pools with water from nearby ponds.  Meanwhile, the house burned to a crisp.  As far as I can tell, no remediation has been done since the fire three months ago.  I can't imagine the mess.

Needless to say, we stopped using our basement for the storage of precious crap (LOL), and yeah, we've also quit accumulating so much crap.

[Loren Ver]

I really like your perspective.  In the end, it is just stuff.  I hope they give you cash :).

LV

[theglidd]

Also live in Northern VA. Basically had a river running past our house, it was crazy. Finished basement got about an inch of water. Ruined flooring and bottom of drywall.

I'll have a busy weekend doing demo and then fixing everything the next couple of months!

Although I think we got lucky, several other folks had several feet of water in basements.

[NV Teacher]

It was a fire for us.  Most of the stuff wasn’t too bad.  A couple of family antiques and the crib my dad made that all eight of us slept in was painful.