Do you know what's in your closets and drawers?

Today marks one month since we lost our home, and we are still amazed at how quickly life can take a turn. Still, there was good news today: Our wonder dog Grete has recovered 100%! She received a clean bill of health from the vet. Also, a few of our recovered belongings returned from being "ozoned" (a.k.a. cleaned), including some jewelry, a handful of photos and documents from our fire-proof safe (fire-proof, but not water proof!).

Our current challenge is creating an inventory of everything we owned - from toothpicks to televisions - for purposes of our insurance claim. Believe me, this is not an exercise anyone would choose to do for fun. In fact, when expressing our frustration to the insurance adjuster, he said "yep, this is about the point when everyone gets frustrated." Without being able to look around at our stuff, we are attempting to identify each item, when and where we bought it, and what it will cost to replace it. It is the most laborious, tedious thing I have ever had to do, and stretches a person's sanity. Some items can be bundled, but that only solves part of the problem. It's also depressing to think of things we won't be able to replace, like a favorite baseball glove or the Christmas stockings my grandma made.

However, wedding registries are saving the day. First of all, my mom found ours, along with a complete list of the gifts we received for our wedding 13 years ago. This find is amazing in itself, and tremendously helpful for our documentation efforts.

Secondly, our friend Robyn is brilliant. She suggested using the wedding registry systems at the stores we frequent to efficiently collect current prices. So, Matt and I spent five hours at various stores on Sunday walking around with a scanner, each time leaving with a print-out of items we owned and their prices. Did I mention how brilliant Robyn is? This was especially effective at Target, where we literally walked up and down every aisle identifying things from our house.

I've lost track of how many total hours we've spent on this project, and there is still no end in sight, but at least there's progress!