Forced unpacking

I made tremendous progress the last couple of days - I put together the big plastic shelving for our pantry items, and I was able to organize them in such a way that I have one shelving unit for food, and one for small appliances, pots, serving pieces, bakeware, etc. that I don't have room for upstairs in the kitchen. I was feeling good about myself. Several boxes were emptied in 2 days. I was starting to move Christmas boxes near other Christmas boxes, and make plans for "what to unpack next". I've put off unpacking my bead, sewing and cross-stitch boxes as much as possible, because I don't have a place to put things away yet. Plus I had boxes that were marked "knick-knacks", photo albums, books - you know, things you can get to later.

Guess what? It does eventually rain in Idaho! And our garage floods! I had to move cardboard boxes away from the garage doors, sweep water to the drain, and figure out why it was flooding! There are 3 low spots in our driveway, and only one of them is the drain. The other 2 were funneling water into the garage, and under the cardboard boxes I had yet to bring upstairs.

So I was forced to unpack a whole bunch of boxes. Now I have baskets of beads sitting in the family room, waiting for shelves for organization. I had to unpack a box of my dolls that I've had since childhood, and they've been boxed up for about 6 years. I found the rest of my DVDs and videos and almost all of my books are okay. The only things that got wet were pictures that were wrapped in paper. At least all of my pantry food was put away, so I don't think anything is actually ruined.

We have a plan to build up a little ramp with concrete to prevent this from happening again. There are rust spots in one corner of the garage (the side farthest from the drain), and the wood is rotting there as well, so we can safely assume this happens a lot!