Lessons Learned From A Fire

Have Renters Insurance:  No one in our building had renters insurance when it burned, including us.  Renters insurance is relatively inexpensive and combining all forms of insurance you have (renters, auto, etc.) can often get you a better deal. The  less than $20 a month is very worth if it should something happen and you have to replace everything you own.

Have A Waterproof Fire Box:  Not every fire box is waterproof.  Ours at the time was not.  I spent the first night after the fire going through all our soggy important papers pulling them apart gently (praying they didn't rip).  Even though our apartment was one of the ones that received most of the fire damage, the water damage was much much worse.

Storage:  Our storage unit was in the basement directly under the worst of the fire.  Fortunately for us, we store everything that will fit in the plastic tubs that have the locking handles.  Anything cloth we put in a vacuum seal bag before it goes in the tub.  Everything in our plastic tubs thankfully survived the fire.

Borax is Your Friend:  We tried numerous methods to get the smell of soot and mold out of everything.  Everything that was in the apartment that day had to be washed.  The only thing we found that actually worked was borax.  Sometimes the loads had to be done two or three times.  Unfortunately with the mountain of things that needed to be washed some things molded to badly to be saved before we got to them.  While borax was a huge help there were some materials (such as fleece) that it was impossible to get the smell out of.

Use Plastic Photo Boxes:  We had several of the cardboard ones which were totally destroyed along with all the pictures inside again due to water damage.  Surprisingly just about everything we had stored in plastic survived the heat.  Most of our pictures inside frames survived as well, as long as we got to them while they were still damp.  We did have some that ended up stuck to the glass.  We have since purchased the photo boxes that have plastic cases inside the plastic box to put our pictures in.  Put important pictures inside the fire box.