Household Triage

Consider all of your household possessions. Which ones could you bear never to see again? That is what I'm going through at the moment. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands (a million?) Houston and coastal residents already evacuated, and a comparable number of those of us who are staying... it's a staggering amount of stuff to be decided upon. In my instance, I'm moving my essentials to Stella's place. I don't know if my criteria are interesting, but here they are, more or less:

* If it's huge but valuable, protect it and leave it. Both harpsichords and the digital piano are in their cases, on their stands and away from windows. It's the best I can do. I used my oldest working computer (vintage 1992) as a weight to stabilize the piano stand.

* If it is personally valuable, easily portable and irreplaceable, take it. A few photos are in that category; most of them, though, I'm wrapping thoroughly and stashing in closets. Recent photos, of course, are backed up on CDs; I'm taking those. My late father's paintings of course go with me, however inconvenient they may be.

* Take the main computer, well-wrapped in plastic. Take every backup CD for the past year. Wrap but do not take monitors, printers, routers, keyboards, mice, etc. Take the DSL modem because it cannot be bought at most computer stores. Take the laptop because it is small. Unplug everything else.

* Take a few CDs, almost at random, to listen to during the storm. Over the years I've collected too many of them; there's no way to sort through them all without making agonizing decisions.

* Books are like CDs, though I will take a few quasi-rare items. But mostly I'll take what I plan to read, and hope for the best for the rest.

And now I must return to my household triage. With luck, I'll post a couple more self-obsessed posts today and maybe even tomorrow before I have to shut down.