So I figure I’m in a unique position (since I’m one of the few people I know who has had a house fire) to offer some advice about what we learned from our little situation. So here’s some things I would recommend so that if you ever (Heaven Forbid!) have a house fire, you’ll be a step ahead of where we are right now.

1) Smoke Detector
I’ll be honest – Ryan and I did not have our smoke detector plugged in. Our detector was super sensitive and would go off all the time. So we took the batteries out and never had it on. Not a smart idea! From now on we’ll probably be sure our fire detector works and isn’t sensitive enough that we’d be unplugging it.

2) Fire Proof Safe
You will feel immensely better just knowing that all your important things are safely encased in this sturdy box. It doesn’t matter how big a safe you get – as long as it’s fire proof it’ll do it’s job. Heck – ours wasn’t even latched shut and it still protected everything in it! More important is what you put in the safe! Here’s just some ideas of what you might want to include in your safe: external hard drive, important photos, wedding bands, legal documents (social security cards, wedding certificate, diploma, etc), etc….

3) Back Up Credit Card
One of the things that would have made our life easier is to have a back up credit card in our safe. It’s been over two weeks and our debit cards still haven’t arrived in the mail. There are something we just can’t buy in person and therefore require a credit or debit card of some kind. Luckily we’ve had family who’ve allowed us to order on their cards and then turned around and wrote them a check, but it would have made our lives significantly easier if we had a back up card available to us.

4) Spare Car Keys
We had our car keys sitting on our kitchen counter. So as I’m sure you can guess – we still haven’t found them. We’re not sure if they melted or if they are just buried underneath all the debris. We’ve now decided in the next house, we’ll have our spare keys in our safe. So that if we’re ever in a similar situation. We’ll have keys to be able to drive our cars.

5) Take Pictures
Big surprise – the photographer’s telling you to take pictures. haha Thankfully I had been taking a lot of pictures of our house because we’ve been doing so much work on it. And I like taking pictures of my decor too. So I at least have something to reference while making the list of our lost belongings. So having pictures or a movie of what you own in your safe might be a beneficial thing for you. Heck – making a list of your belongings might not be a bad idea either. Then you’ve got it when you need it. 🙂

Contact Me | Visit My Website | Join the Facebook Fan Page | Follow Me on Twitter