Our goal, in the blazing sun of the week post-Harvey, was to sort into three piles: throw away, repair, and pack for some undefined future place where what the Victorians called “household gods” might reign again. The “throw away” pile grew steadily on the curb: here were the couches whose foam cushions could never be made completely dry; the tables whose legs fell of as we lifted them; the electronics that would never turn on again. As our pile grew, so did those of many of our neighbors, many of whom had never seen the inside of our house nor we theirs.

This blog was inspired by living through two disasters: Hurricane Harvey in August of 2017, and the COVID epidemic—still, of course, ongoing. Harvey destroyed my family’s house by Braes Bayou in Houston, TX. This coincided with our sons leaving home, and after a long and stressful period of dealing with moldy belongings, a ravaged property, an unusually understanding insurance agent, dozens of online forms that did not work properly, and a strange feeling of placelessness, my husband and I bought another house and began a period of empty nesting. That nest is now full.