The Perils of Home Ownership

A while ago, my wife and I had a small crisis with our house, which made me again wonder if renting a home might not have been simpler at the end of it all. Every year you must to turn off the spigot in the garage (and maybe in the back of your house) in the fall, or it may freeze up and crack. Last year I forgot to do this and sure enough something in the pipes split and we ended up with a fair amount of water in the basement. It wasn’t enough to worry about an Insurance Claim, but it was one hell of a mess.

Michael James has railed and lampooned me for what a huge mess I have in my basement, well, I can assure him that there is a lot less mess, because we have had to throw out a great deal of stuff that was in cardboard boxes  (and that should have been thrown out a long time ago).

It’s interesting the things that I found down there, such as:

• Tax Returns going back to 1981 (I am destroying those not of this century).
• Lots of art work from our kids (who are all at University). Strangely for my 8 year old son we don’t have any art work.

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Anyhow, the moral of this story is many fold so let me count it (as is my love of numbered lists):

1. Turn off the interior faucet (if you have one) for your outside faucets (and if you don't have an interior cut off, you might want to get one).
2. If your basement is full of cardboard boxes sitting on the floor, you mustn't care much about what is in there because it doesn't take much water to destroy those.
3. Go through your records and only keep those things that are needed (32-year-old tax returns are not needed, except for a good laugh about how much I made as a co-op student).
4. If you hear water running in your house, but you can't find any open faucets, check your basement FIRST.
5. Always know where the water shut off is for your house (and if you need a wrench or vice grips to shut it off, have one near by).

My, that was an interesting weekend.