Sorting

One of the most stressful days was when we sorted through the entire apartment. It took six hours for a crew of about 8 or 10 people to get through everything. Anthony and I each took a room and half of the crew. We had notepads and pens and wrote down every single item. There was a gigantic dumpster parked under the living room window and everything being tossed went out that way. A few things got packed up in boxes. Most of the dishes and glasses and silverware were salvageable. I had a bit of a fight at first to get them to carefully pack the cookware set. We have a very nice stainless steel Cuisinart set, and two Calphalon One pans with lids. They are way too expensive to be treated like shit. They were going to just put them in a box loose, without any wrapping. I had to strenuously object and tell them that they HAD to put paper between each item, and wrap it carefully. I had a similar fight when it came to the Beaujolais glasses. The appliances sitting out had to get trashed, gallons of water tend to create problems for electronics. The immersion blender, and panini maker actually survived, since they weren't drenched with water. I was in charge of sorting through the kitchen and bathroom. Nothing from the bathroom survived, except for the very nice shower curtain hooks. Anthony had the living room, which was completely trashed, and the bedroom, which had a few salvageable items. Amazingly enough the desktop computer he built himself survived and so did the monitor and the LCD tv and dvd recorder. There was one piece of luck in our favor, because we got them all when they were on sale for ridiculously great prices, and would be very hard to come across again.

It's incredibly depressing to see all of the things you hand picked so carefully be tossed away. We spent so much time making that apartment ours, even though I hadn't moved in yet. We shopped carefully for great deals and things we really loved. I'll admit there were a few things I wanted to replace, but not this way.

A few days after the sorting, the cleaning company and insurance tried to pull some bullshit about charging for the cleaning out of the apartment. Despite the fact that Anthony hadn't been told that he would have to pay, he was given the impression that it was a service the insurance offered. He knew he would have to pay for the salvageable items that the company cleaned, but never that he would have to pay for the crew, their labor and a dumpster. They claimed they were going to charge him 6,000 dollars. That money would come out of his 40,000 dollar item replacement fund. After some negotiation, they backed down to charging him 1,000, and he may go after his landlord for it, since it is technically his responsibility to clean out the apartment because the fire was his fault.

Instead of paying them to clean the few salvageable things, we took them back to Anthony's new place and did a quick rinse in the sink and then sterilized them in the dishwasher. It's comforting to have the same plates to eat off of, and the pots and pans we love.