It's Kinda Like that Movie About Groundhog Day......

Today's flood was brought to us courtesy of a washing machine and a floor drain.  Yep, that's right....after all the cleaning and mopping and fan running we did on Thursday and Friday, I got up this morning, started a load of laundry, and returned an hour later to yet another chapter in the Flooded Basement Chronicles.  This time, I was the only adult onsite.  My nephews were here and offered to help, but there's no way I'd let a little kid clean up sewer water.  Since it was the washing machine that caused it, the basement smelled Downy fresh ~ a plus while I mopped and wet vac-ed.  The challenge today was, since it was the floor drain backing up, I could not dump the mopped water inside the house.  I had to schlep the shop vac, then bucket, full of water up the stairs, through the garage, and into the yard where I dumped it on the nearest snowbank.  I made about twenty of those trips before I was done.  I know I will be sore in the morning.

Walker came home and called a plumber.  We're now on his list of house calls but we don't know if he can come Monday or if it will be Tuesday; it depends on how long it takes him to fix the folks ahead of us.  We decided to wait for this particular guy because he has a little camera that he sticks down the drains to find out what, exactly, the problem is.  I don't want to waste any more time or effort "trying things" and hoping the issue is fixed. Been there, done that.  I cannot keep spending hours a day mopping up water.

After I cleaned up all the puddles I set fans around to dry the damp concrete.  I also set up a space heater and turned on the fan in the furnace to keep the air moving as much as possible.  A couple hours later I went back downstairs and started the real project: sorting, tossing, and storing in totes all the stuff we had on the shelves that got wet.  If you had asked me before all this, I would have said all we had was some holiday decorations, old furniture, paint cans, and a couple boxes of assorted "stuff".  Now I know just how much crap was packed onto those shelves.  I did not know we had six coolers and three thermoses.  I do now, because I dried each and every one of them. We will not be keeping six coolers and three thermoses.  I see rummage sales in my future.

Even though I only got through about a third of the stuff, I filled four large garbage bags with stuff that was unsalvagable or just plain junk to begin with.  I can't put anything back on the shelves until the plumber fixes the pipe, so I have Rubbermaid totes stacked in the laundry room. We now have a very large pile of stuff in the garage, waiting for trash day.  I also had to remove two computers that were soaked when the pipe burst. Those can't go out in the trash; we need to have them recycled.   I verified with my insurance agent that I'm covered for both the burst pipe and the sewer backup, but I don't know yet if it will be worth filing a claim.  I have a high deductible for flood damage.

I am so, so tired right now.  And I get to do it all again tomorrow.