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 |  is paved with good intentions... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hi, I'm Elle. I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm the mother of two young adults, the wife of an entrepreneurial gamer and the Queen of Unfinished Projects. This blog will contain poems, short stories, possibly photos and book reviews if you're lucky, and my thoughts on a variety of topics. Hope you enjoy it. |
The house is on fire, but everyone is safely out, the pets are safely out, and all wallets/cash are saved. If you could make one last dash to get something, what would it be? ~ "Question of the Day!"  Okay, let's be clear first of all, that I wouldn't be the ninny running around trying to grab everything. If it were a real fire, I'd be getting the fuck out. But in a more hypothetical sense, let's roll with this... This is a really tough question for me. I have too many boxes of memorabilia that I'd be upset to lose, and I'd want to make another ten dashes to rescue stuff! So, I recently posted about how I'd finished putting my memorabilia from 2001 into my printed blog book, right? And the inference is that I have memorabilia from every year since, waiting to go into a blog book. So I have boxes of memorabilia. Most boxes are about the size of a shoebox, and fit approximately two years worth of memorabilia. So I have approximately 18 boxes of stuff. One of the boxes is titled 'miscellaneous' because it contains memorabilia that pre-dates 2001 or it's undated and I'm not sure where it fits chronologically. I've been thinking about this recently, actually. I'd be so gutted to lose that stuff. But how can I protect it? Fireproof boxes are usually small, and we don't have room for something huge anyway. I don't really have room for the boxes as it is! I guess... I guess I should scan all the memorabilia, because then at least if I lost it all, I could include images of it. Photos of tickets and things. It wouldn't be the same, but I'm going to have to do this in part anyway, because I have to make two copies of each book and only have one set of memorabilia. So yeah, this is the backup plan. But that means I have to photograph and/or scan all my crap. Not that I think it's crap, of course, or I wouldn't have kept it, but it's a running joke in our family. When Caitie was little, she was telling Steve that we needed to clear the table for dinner and we had to move something of Daddy's, and Mummy's crap. She meant 'scrap' because it was all my scrapbooking paraphernalia, but she said 'Mummy's crap' and that stuck. So okay. I need to digitise all my memorabilia so that if something happens to it, I'm not too upset. I've got all sorts of stuff, and it's hard to know what's most important to keep. I have newspaper clippings about my grandfather, that are from newspapers printed before I was born. I have booklets from stage show productions I was in as a child. I have yearbooks from high school, and letters and stories that heyxie  and I wrote in high school. I have the kids' baby blankets, and my wedding dress. I have the porcelain doll my mother gave me for my 21st birthday that SHE was given for her birthday as a child from her grandmother. I have stuff that belonged to Steve's grandparents and my grandparents. FUCK! How do you know what to take?!Hmm, I just had a quick Google, and it looks like jewellery and metalware (eg. silver/copper dishes/plates/jugs) will survive a house fire. So I'd leave the jewellery and the antiques. That's good. So if I exclude the jewellery and the metalware, I still have a shitload of stuff left. Apparently some stoneware will survive, but not china or crockery. Ugh. We don't have much stoneware. Mum's Wedgwood collection is stoneware I think, but I've only got two pieces of stoneware that I know of. I have loads of china, glassware and crystal. Apparently crystal will survive better than the others, but only up to a point. For instance, if the fire is extinguished early, the crystal might survive. One website recommended packing china and crystal into sealed storage boxes, and then they're more likely to survive (excluding a total loss situation). All my valuables that aren't on display are loving wrapped in newspaper inside cardboard boxes.  Oh, I just realised that if metal survives, the war medals should be fine. That's good. The one bonus of our house is that it has metal cladding, which makes it more resistant to fire. But that's only if the fire is on the outside, not if it starts inside. If it starts inside the house, it's basically a sealed oven.  Okay, I've had a look through my list of stuff, and I think I've narrowed it down. While I'd be gutted to lose any of it, if I could only make one trip, I'd grab the two paintings in the lounge. One was painted by Steve's grandfather and the other was painted by Steve's grandmother. They're irreplaceable, as both grandparents have since passed away. So that's what I'd grab if I had the chance. But again, I wouldn't take the risk. I'm not that much of a ninny! |
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