Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
In the Eye of the Storm
As I write this, my dad and stepmother are hunkering down in Florida, while Irma moves toward them. They feel safe and they’ve taken precautions. My stepmother told me that they moved some art she has in a storage unit to the very top, so that if the unit flooded, at least the art would be out of harm’s way. They weathered days without electricity on the 14th floor after Superstorm Sandy, and seemed much less perturbed than people half their age. (Possibly because they don’t really care about their cell phones.)
That’s the thing about disasters: They seem to bring our priorities into focus. What really matters? For my stepmother, it’s art; for someone else it might be books or the family silver. My husband teases me that if we had to evacuate I’d take the photo albums and leave the kids. (Untrue! I’d make the kids carry the albums—they’re heavy.)
Hopefully you are safe, and not in Irma’s path, but do a little armchair experiment. Ask yourself what (other than lives, obviously) you would want to save, and how easy that would be to achieve. When your home is cluttered or disorganized, finding the important stuff and getting it to safety is more challenging.
And if, while you are sitting in your chair, you look around and realize that you wouldn’t miss eighty percent of the stuff in your house if it was destroyed, then get up and start letting that stuff go.