Thanksgiving is coming. With it, ideally, we’d be hosting and attending various gatherings with family and friends. Planning a meal for the immediate family. Developing a meal plan, making a grocery list, hitting the grocery store. Planning out my cooking timelines, making shelf-stable items in advance, making freezable items in advance to take advantage of Nature’s freezer (my garage 🙂 ), figuring out how to time the space in my oven and assigning space in my refrigerator.

Instead, I’m trying to deal with water in finished spaces in the basement, bleaching, drying, box fans, a dehumidifier, sharp tack strips underfoot, laundry galore from having sopped up the water with every cotton cloth in the house. And I’m dealing with storage boxes EVERYWHERE, most especially taking over every bit of the entryway of our split level house

Financially that meant a weekend septic tanker truck visit, two box fans, a dehumidifier, carpet padding rolls, carpet padding adhesive, carpet padding tape, finishing nails for putting the molding back down, two special tools for getting the carpet stretched and seamed, and a big water and electricity bill for the month.

Hours and hours of extra work. An extra ~$800 in expenses. Things I couldn’t have planned for specifically, but thankfully both the time and money were available. The time because was gave up some other things that were optional. The money because houses come with challenges, which I have taken after one of my pilot friend’s concepts of expense increments, where 1 AU (aeronautical units)=$1000 – seems to work out the same for home ownership, every expense comes in $1000 increments.

Then I got to specifically plan ahead. The carpet padding came in rolls, 6’x8′. We are all the way across town from the store, so minimizing the number of trips to buy or return would be great. How many did I need?

The answer?

Two 🙂

This holiday season, I hope you have planned ahead, so when the unexpected happens, it’s an inconvenience rather than a disaster.