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My oldest son works in politics. Runs campaigns. Running a campaign is very much like doing temp work. When you're working, it's great, and if your candidate wins, you get a nice bonus, and you MIGHT get recognition, and move up through the ranks, and who knows, get hired on as a staff member.
But sometimes, your candidate doesn't win, and now you're looking for the next race, and hopefully you saved up enough to tide your over til the next race.
My son lived in a very expensive city, and sometimes, it came down to selling his possessions on ebay to pay bills, unexpected car repairs, etc. More than once, he's had to do that.
I realize that's not losing everything...but still...it's losing a lot, and I would imagine it's discombobulating, to have to sell off the things you bought...the new couch, the TV, your bed even...just to be able to stay in your apartment. I think it'd be high anxiety.
I've helped financially. He hated asking...but I helped.
I have to admit, I believe the experience of losing a large percentage of one's belongings in a disaster is rather different than choosing to adopt a philosophy of minimalism. I think if I was someone who had lost my home in a fire or flood, I would not be comforted by someone telling me that they live with few possessions and enjoy it.
As for not being able to remember everything... sparrow and its_rosie you both have experienced what I was talking about. I actually live fairly minimally myself these days. I only have two small shelves of books in my living room - maybe a total of 40-50 books that I've collected over the years and that have personal meaning to me. If I was to try to sit here and write down the titles to those right now, I'm doubtful I would make it past 20 titles, even though I've read each of those books many times.
I guess you could say they aren't that important to me if I can't remember them, but that is one of the things I was curious about - how many of us can remember all of the things we own? It might be a fun experiment to try. Think of a room in your house and try to write down every item in it, and see how close you get to the actual number.
One thing I've thought about doing is to create a list of the most important and irreplaceable items in my home that would fit into a few large bags or suitcases that I could use if I did need to leave at the last minute. It would be nice to have something like that rather than running around trying to grab random stuff.
As for scanning important documents to the cloud- what do people do to make sure those documents are secure in the case someone hacks into your account?
In Buddhism, the loss of one's possessions equates with freedom.
And thankfully, younger generations are becoming less materialistic, more interested in experiences. Plus they probably have a lot of their best stuff on the Cloud.
I feel stress accumulating more possessions (especially of value). When I'm ready to move for retirement I will happily eliminate 80-90% of my stuff.
Arguably the more important factor for those whose homes have been destroyed is financial and the busy need to put their lives back together.
In the Kris Kristofferson song, freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
One type of recurring conflict in world history is between nomadic tribes and settled communities. Some parts of the world were never suitable for permanent settlement, so trying to impose such a lifestyle leads to tears as towns are abandoned. The current trends of homelessness and migration may have some cultural effect on possession.
I can't imagine going through something that horrible. I remember a friend having a house fire and one of his cats was missing. He came here after him and his friend left the ER. We sat up all night and at dawn we went to the house and found the cat alive and hiding in the basement. They spent a week with us and I helped him with his wounds. He got burned pretty bad trying to put the fire out. His friend had AIDS and I was worried that he might have it as well. It was a very difficult time.
The thought of all of the antiques being destroyed in our house makes me really sad. They're also not insured and took us over 20 years to collect. Some of them are irreplaceable family pieces. I'm hoping a future generation will some day love them as much as we do. They are just on permanent loan in our house and I hope they live on for hundreds of years.
When I was in 7th grade our house burned on Nov. 21, 1961 just a few days before Thanksgiving. At 9:35 when I was in History class in 7th grade, I heard the fire whistle to call the volunteer fire department to go fight a fire and I prayed it was not a house. We got an hour for lunch and usually walked home; but that day my best friend's mom came to school to pick us up. My neighbor from across the street also rode with us. On the way home Mrs P. told me were were going to her house for lunch because we had had a small fire at our house. She should have taken a different way to her house and let Ruth walk back to her house, but she didn't. When I saw the house, I was in shock. My room was gone! Before Mrs. P got the car stopped, I had the door open and was jumping out of the moving car(man does that hurt your feet). My sister owned the house 2 doors down and I ran crying to her house. We lost all our clothes, the furniture, etc. But my mom and 3 of my nieces and nephews who had been in the house and did not know it was on fire till the mail man came in the front door yelling fire were not hurt. . Mom grabbed the kids and he grabbed the dog that absolutely would have torn his arms off on any other day. They were safe. We lived about 2 blocks from where 2 of my other older sisters worked and when they were told the fire was at our house they took off running to the house. The fire was on the 2nd floor, attic, and roof; but one ran up to mom and dad's room and got the lock box with all the important papers. The other ran around downstairs and took pictures off the wall and tables et. so we didn't lose pictures. Otherwise it was a total loss from fire and water damage.
Insurance was not enough to cover the tear down-rebuild-and refurnish. Insurance did not cover for all the clothes we needed. We basically had the clothes on our back. And I had one wool outfit downstairs in a closet that I generally wore for church. I will never forget that next day when I wore it the boy who sat in front of me made the comment "Ick! Something smells horrible and turned around and told me I stunk. I guess my outfit reeked of smoke; but none of us could tell because even my sisters house smelled like smoke. That brought the tears again. My friends showed up with clothes their moms and grandmas were making for them and they went together and bought me a beautiful gold necklace. So yes, you recover; but it never quite forgotten. It definitely is not downsizing or losing what is on a hard drive. It is life changing.
That said. I live in Florida. I have faced hurricanes and twice basically our whole town caught fire. When a hurricane is coming, Floridians usually have a plan and work on it at the beginning of hurricane season. You either mentally or physically make a list of what to bring. When there was a big one heading right at us and we decided to move to a hotel in Orlando one time. We grabbed the kids, the pets, the hard drive, some memory cards, some pictures I had put in a plastic tub earlier, and a change of clothes. Nothing else was important. Michael moved in fast, the people in the panhandle did not have much time to prepare for this one. My heart and prayers go out to them. There's some stories about the town fire but I won't go into them except to say" Ladies check what your husband decides to pack when the fire is at the door. Mine did not do a good job. "
OP. And this is why you should inventory all your possessions, even if the inventory is simply a video of you going through each room. You can rest assured your insurance company is not going to rely on your memory.
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I have a plan, but if I'm not home....oops.
