My parents are very smart people. I mean, not just intellectually smart, but common sense smart. I turn to them for advice almost on the daily.
That being said, the lesson I'm learning now (the hard way, might I add), could have been avoided had I just modeled what my parents taught us while we were growing up.
Every time we left the house for more than a day or two, we had to make sure everything was "cleaned up, picked up, put away" before we left. Like totally spotless. Now, at the time, their rationale for doing these things was a bit morbid, but it worked. They said we needed to leave the house spic and span clean in case something catastoprohic happened while we were away. That way, whoever had to deal with the aftermath of said catastrophe, wouldn't think we were slovenly human beings. And it was just plain courtesy.
Well, in June, we set out to leave our house in Tallahassee to head to Orlando for a few days, and then on to spend seven weeks in Illinois. Due to doctor appointments and a few other obligations, I stayed behind with the kids, planning to join Heath a few days later.
Because I'm a stressed out packer, and because I have two tiny humans who rather enjoy tearing into things, I may or may not have left our house in somewhat of a disarray. (Read - complete and utter chaos...toys everywhere, clean laundry folded on the couches, mail on the kitchen counter, last minute things I decided needed to stay behind kind of everywhere, Finley's most recent art projects, you get the picture.)
Now, normally this wouldn't be that big of a problem. I knew I would come home in August and have suitcases to unpack, PLUS a house to tidy up. But, as my parents always said, in case of a catastrophe...
Our catastrophe started as something that was annoying, but not a major issue. Inconvenient, sure, but catastrophic? Not at all. Our neighbor texted on July 19th (Finley's birthday) to ask if she could park their RV in our driveway while they had some work done at their house. Of course, no problem! By all means...
Well, thank heavens she asked! Our other fabulous neighbor went over to the house with her so they could access an electrical outlet in the garage, and when they opened it up, they found that there was standing water covering the majority of it. Awesome. Turns out our water heater had sprung a leak, and it took down several boxes of books and a counter with it.
Okay. Simple fix. Remove water heater, clean up water, and replace. Heath and our neighbor got it all worked out, and a new water heater was to be scheduled the following week, the 26th.
Fast forward to the afternoon of the 26th. I had taken the kids on a mini tour of the Midwest, making stops in Louisville, southern Indiana, Indy, Champaign, and Springfield. While I was pulling into our next stop in Indy, my neighbor called and asked me to have the plumbing guys come back to the house because he thought there was something wrong after they had installed the new water heater. Oh, there was definitely something wrong. Turns out the common wall between the garage (where the water heater was) and our family room had gotten wet...very very wet, and now we had buckled flooring, wet drywall, and best of all...mold. Rock on.
*Thank heavens for our neighbors. Seriously. The best people on the planet.
Keep in mind that all of this was taking place while neither one of us was in town...I was running around the Midwest, and Heath was in Orlando. Our neighbor became the physical contact for several insurance people, as well as our new mold specialist friend, Chad. We began the slow and grueling process of insurance claims and adjustments and mold mitigation. So many hurdles to jump through. And because of the nature of mold, we couldn't be in the house while all of this mitigation was taking place.
September 1 brought hurricane Hermine which also delayed the progress of our mold mitigation.
Tonight, October 3, is our first official night back in the house. We have no flooring. There is drywall dust everywhere. The walls are not finished being repaired. The contents of the two "containment areas" are now dispersed among the already messy house. Our furniture isn't ruined, but is sealed up in the garage to be treated for mold at a later time (by us) because we maxed out the allotted insurance monies for mold damage. We have suitcases and bags piled up everywhere because we have now been away from our house for 16 weeks. And we have no food in the house because both the refrigerator and upright freezer had to be purged because of the storm outages in September.
But tonight, instead of running around like a complete crazy person, attempting to clean and rearrange, Finley and I made a Halloween paper chain, because that was more important.
So, the moral of this long story is three-fold:
1. Mother knows best;
2. Enjoy the moment, for this too shall pass all too quickly;
3. And for goodness sakes, clean your house before leaving for any period of time beyond 24 hours.
