As I’ve often told my two kiddos, as we talk about evolutionary biology and anthropology, indoor plumbing is a wonderful thing.

Until it’s not.

Two weekends ago we had water in our basement. It was a multi-faceted problem:

• A basement toilet that has had many problems with its flapper valve.
• A bathroom user who doesn’t stick around to make sure that the toilet stopped running.
• A septic outlet pipe that was partially blockaded by a fat blob

The short term result was water everywhere – water across our bathroom floor, water in our bathroom closet, water into the laundry room floor, and more damaging – water out into the carpeted hallway and the carpeted adjacent bedroom cum storage room.

My 5 year old and I were the only two home when I found the problem, and between the two of us we accomplished most of the movement of the stuff from the storage room. Trip after trip after trip, we’ve filled the front entry and the kids play room with items from the storage room.

Losses from the day were much less bad than I could have expected.

• The water that ran all over the floor was clean!
• One box of materials headed to the trash.
• Laundry galore, from all the towels we were using to mop up the water.
• A job of prying up the molding, pulling up the carpet, cutting out the carpet pad, bleaching the flooring, setting up the fans and dehumidifier and checking/moving/emptying them multiple times a day.
• Expenses
  • Septic tanker emergency visit
  • 2x box fans
  • dehumidifier
  • carpet pad
  • carpet pad adhesive
  • carpet pad knife
  • carpet pad/carpet tape
  • $415 in cash outlays, three trips to Home Depot, one semi-annoyed septic tanker owner being called on the opening weekend of deer season, and a lot of stress and panic

The next step in rehab is you have to wait a week after everything feels dry to the touch, continuing to fan and dehumidify.

Finally there’s putting everything back together. That part hasn’t gone as well for us.

My husband has been down sick (after feeling cruddy for a week he’s been in bed for one whole day, and then in bed for most of two more, he’s still not feeling great yet).

And it’s chaos season for me at work, there’s essentially unlimited (but unpaid) overtime.

And we’re coming up on Thanksgiving.

Net result – we had the financial margin to be able to handle this blow, no need to file a homeowners insurance claim (that’s less than our deductible). But we didn’t have the time margin. We have let chores slide, we’ve gathered the supplies to do the repair work, but our house won’t be up to hosting Thanksgiving for friends. And that makes me sad.

I wish you all margin in both your time and your money.