Forced minimalism is what happens when you have a house fire and lose almost everything in the span of less than an hour.
That's what happened to us on December 7, 2013. No worries...we're all okay. The three people and two dogs made it out of the burning house. The only life lost, as a certain kiddo won't let me forget was our beta fish, Prancer.
The whole thing is still pretty surreal. Sometimes this new life is starting to seem almost normal and other times I think, holy shit! I can't believe that happened to us. Losing everything in a fire happens to other people, not to us. Except it did. Wow!
The nitty gritty details...
It had snowed and the roads were still icy. After spending the morning cleaning house so we could decorate for Christmas, the girls had spent some time jumping on the trampoline in the snow. I'd turned the fireplace on so they could warm up in front of it when they came in. (A backstory...my parents' neighbors had a chimney fire in early November so I had a chimney sweep out the day before Thanksgiving just to check things out before I turned on the fireplace for the first time this year. Everything looked fine with the fireplace.) Anyway, after the girls came in and warmed up, we started decorating the Christmas tree. The tree was almost done when I turned and looked into the living room. There was a layer of smoke across the room at the level of the mantel. I ran over and turned off the fireplace, opened the door, and turned on the fan to clear the smoke. At that time, I thought it was just smoke building up from the fire place. Then more smoke kept coming and coming. That's when I realized it was something more. The girls and I grabbed the dogs and ran out through the garage to get leashes on the dogs. Molly bolted to the back yard before I could leash her so as soon as I finished calling 911 (which took me several tries because I couldn't remember how to unlock my phone and make a call), I sent the girls all the way out to the yard and went to the back yard to find Molly. Fortunately, that was quick and we went to meet the girls and head across the street to wait for the fire truck. While I was getting Molly, I had the big girl call my parents and tell them what was going on. My dad said when he answered the phone, the big girl said very deadpan, "mom told me to call you and tell you the house is burning." The way she said it, he couldn't tell how bad it was or if we needed him to come. We did!!! Sometime before the fire truck showed up, the house flashed. The big girl said she saw it (we left the door open as we ran out). I didn't see that but I did see flames start billowing out the back porch. Neighbors started showing up and after what seemed like forever (although I think it was really just a couple of minutes) the fire department arrived and got to work. The rest was kind of a blur of talking to the firemen about what happened and my dad coming and taking the girls to their house before coming back to wait with me.
I assumed the fire was from the chimney because we had the fire going but the fire inspector said it was really from an outlet just down the wall from the chimney. Two days later, the origin and cause investigator for the insurance company said the same thing. Apparently, when that outlet was put in (sometime before I bought the house), when they pushed the wire though the floor, the insulation on the wire was torn so it was just a ticking time bomb all that time. At least it picked a time when we were all awake and together to go off. In other circumstances, it could have been much, much worse.
Our house was declared a total loss. I've sent a few things to restoration...a desk my grandfather made when my mom was a little girl, a case he made for my childhood teddy bear and my teddy bear, my great grandmother's old singer sewing machine, and a few special outfits for the girls. Otherwise, everything will be trashed. We are starting from scratch.
The night of the fire, after we got to my parents, we all went to Target and got some new underwear and socks, a pair of jeans and a couple of new tshirts, and a pair of pajamas each. Talk about minimalism!
Since then, we've receive a lot of clothing donations. We've kept what the girls like and what fits and the rest have been passed on to other fire victims via a friend.
Besides clothing, someone basically furnished our house as he was moving out of his apartment, giving us a couch, desk, tv stand, and kitchen stuff. Another person gave us a king size mattress and box springs while our landlord is loaning us a twin bed and bedding. We've had to buy almost nothing. It's been truly amazing.
Of course, the little girl wants to replace every single thing right now. And she has been given several stuffed animals. However, the big girl and I have talked about my goals for our life in our rental and our life when we move back home. I hope to maintain a minimalist life. I'm hoping to limit our purchases while in the rental so we have only clothing and such to move when the time comes and then limit the purchases for our home to the things we really need and love. The big girl has always complained about having too much stuff to clean and organize so I really want to prevent that.
I'm hoping that while we're here in the rental with so few things, we can all develop some good habits about picking up after ourselves on a regular basis. And really, when you have nothing, cleaning up goes really, really fast! It's kind of awesome.
So what's the purpose of this blog? To chronicle the next 6ish months as we demo and rebuild our home and return to normal while continuing the minimalist lifestyle that has been force upon us.
