That basement creek

Fans have been running in the basement since Thursday morning. Some stuff had dried out, other things are busy growing mold. Demolition begins in the morning. I've gone through all the boxes, digging down until I get to what is wet, and even then if it can be cleaned I sometimes haul it out. One example of that is Christmas ornaments. The metal and some glass ones will be cleaned, the ones made of wood and the electric lights will be tossed. I had large garbage bags around several boxes of books. Alas, each one of those bags had a leak. The place smells of wet cardboard.

I've talked to the insurance company. They are sending a check for the maximum on my policy, which will cover only 60% of the removal and nothing of the reconstruction. I'm annoyed that when the company changed how they cover water damage I did not get a call from my agent to discuss what dollar limit was appropriate.

Removal of the water-damaged materials should only take 2-3 days. That will include bleaching all that remains, including the lower part of walls (10 gallons of bleach are included in the bill). I'll have one large room as an unfinished basement. Any reconstruction work won't begin until the last week of August. That will give me time to decide what I want.

Since I'll have the contractor's dump trailer here I've been looking around for other things I should toss into it, like cracked cement garden border blocks.

There were, of course, various boxes from purchases made over the years. Many were from the kind of merchandise where a notice on the box or in the instructions says to keep the box. Some of those got wet and are now useless. Others were dry but were for stuff that is out of warranty or for stuff I no longer own -- such as the box for the sound system for the car I bought twenty years ago. My recycle bin is going to be full.

Garrison Keillor once told a story, as part of his News from Lake Wobegon, about a couple. The wife started talking about wanting to move to another residence (I don't remember what kind). The husband like their current place just fine. So he started accumulating all sorts of stuff. Naturally, this annoyed the wife who saw no use for his junk. But there was a use, he replied. It was ballast. The more ballast he had the harder it would be to move.

I moved into my current house almost twenty years ago. It was a move paid for by the company, so the amount of ballast wasn't an issue. Besides, leading up to the move I wasn't all that good at sorting through stuff. Much better to let them pack all that ballast and take it with me.

I just lost a lot of ballast. Some of it is stuff I haven't used in twenty years (or longer) -- it was still in the boxes from that last move. Much of it I won't miss. Other stuff I have used in the years since. Some of that was from my previous career, so again won't be missed. But there are some things -- old books, mementos from my life -- that I'll miss. But it's gone, useless, damaged, to be carted out over the next couple days.