You Have 5 Minutes
Picture this: you wake up to an emergency evacuation being called for your neighborhood due to a wildfire inching it’s way toward your house (or any natural disaster). You have 5 minutes to gather your belongings and leave. You may or may not have a home to return to. Aside from the obvious - people and pets - what would you bring and why? Do you know where these items are in your home? Try it out now - set a timer for 5 minutes (don’t cheat!) and gather what you can remember off the top of your head. Did you miss anything?
It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve been thinking about this situation. A friend of mine’s childhood home caught fire this spring and as I was helping her sort through the photos the firefighters had salvaged, I realized that this is something I should probably put some thought into. Hurricane Milton was another recent reminder. Ideally, the goal is minimizing the decision down to a few things that are always stored in the same space so they are easy to identify and locate as you rush to safety.
This is when I ordered the NokBox, a fireproof file box where my family can store the most important documents and items we may need if there is ever a need to access them quickly. I’ve just started to dive in (this is a project, not a task) and will keep you posted as I work on it. It will be a process, but so worth it!
But lets get back to the stuff. What will you look for first? Will you run to the basement to grab the dusty box of old cassette tapes from the 90s that you’ve been hesitant to part with? Will you slide under your bed and between the accumulating dust bunnies pull out the Winnie the Pooh figurine that someone (who exactly you aren’t sure) gave you for your first birthday? Or will you scramble to find the photos and important documents that are much harder to replace? I know where I’d go first.
This perspective helps me when decluttering our home. In fact, I am starting to think of it more as downsizing, as we are making our way out of the accumulation phase of life as our kids are growing up. It’s hard to believe it, but we no longer feel like we need all the things to entertain our offspring. Very few toys entertain them anymore, in fact, our youngest at 7 finds a sturdy cardboard box and some markers more interesting than any flashy noisy piece of plastic. Thankfully. We’ve made huge progress on actual clutter, so we are tackling more of the sentimental items that have been set aside until “later”. Now is later.
So how do we prepare for the nightmare of an imposing disaster? (I feel odd saying this out loud on Election Day here in the US…but let’s keep this to the domestic realm). The first thing the firefighters brought out to my friend were photos. Yes, they actually brought them out (drenched, in frames) as they were fighting the fire. Talk about empathy. They asked her where the documents might be and ended up coming out with those too. Frankly, it was a miracle. It was hard enough swallowing the fact that her childhood home was no longer, but can you imagine the extra work required if all of the important documents were gone too? I can’t.
The easiest way to get started is to designate an area of your home where you plan to store these things of value. Under your bed might be hard to access in an emergency, and on the kitchen counter is too cumbersome and unsightly. Somewhere like a closet or a shelf is ideal. A small fireproof safe or box can contain most important documents like birth, marriage & death certificates, passports, social security cards, titles and the like.
Photos are another story. I am currently in the process of collecting photos from all over our life and organizing them in one space. I’m talking scrapbooks from the early 2000s, random thumb drives found in the bottom of old work bags, and Shutterfly albums from before cameras on phones were the norm. It’s a lot. For now, the printed photos are in 3 photo boxes and the digital photos are on an external hard drive. Eventually, the printed photos will be scanned and digital as well. Just in case. Stay tuned for more in-depth thoughts on organizing photos. It’s a whole new world.
Of course important items are not limited to documents and photos. There may be keys, irreplaceable artifacts from your past like jewelry, heirlooms, etc. If they are not being used or displayed on a regular basis, they should be in a spot that is with or very near the other items you will want to grab.
When you have more time to spend on this type of preparation, you might want to look into a more organized system for storing these important documents. Like I said, I’m trying the NokBox, but there are other options out there as well. Once I am able to give an honest review on what I chose, I will let you know!
You’ll have to update this collection on a regular basis so that it remains relevant. When you update your will, make sure the most recent copy is there. When you renew a passport or get a new key for your home, put those updated copies in the spot. Make sure it doesn’t get hidden or covered by clutter. You want to be reminded of it’s presence now and then so you have very little thinking to do when the time comes. It doesn’t need to be fluorescent and yell “IMPORTANT THINGS TO STEAL HERE” for intruders, but just be reasonable and don’t put it in the corner of the basement where your Costco hauls usually end up.
Regardless of where you are in this journey, it’s important that you make those closest to you aware of where these things are stored. The work you put into this preparation is null if the rest of your family won’t know where to find it. Call your parents and ask them where you could find their important documents. Do you have a key to the safe or know where it is? Do you know how to find the passwords to their accounts? The time to know these things is now.
Once you’ve started on this project, set that timer again and see how you did. You’d be surprised how much of a difference you can make in just a few minutes. Gifting your family a few minutes every month to get your things in order is just as important as that phone call to tell your mom you love her.
If you want to read more about how you can give your family the gift of time and knowledge, check out this post on Swedish Death Cleaning.