It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

Hubby and I went away for the weekend on our annual "vacation-sans-kids" trip.  We had a great time and came home much more relaxed.  We stopped off at my parents' house to pick up the kids and arrived home in time to make dinner.  I felt inspired to make chili using up previously cooked and frozen ground beef.  But I lacked the necessary canned tomatoes and beans in my kitchen pantry, so I went down to the basement to get what I needed.

Instead of finding the food, I found this.

"Honey!  We have a flood downstairs!  Come help me!"

Why does it feel like I keep calling Hubby to help me take care of disasters???

My initial thought...a repeat of our last great flood when our sump pump failed.  Our entire basement was under an inch of water and it was a complete disaster.  Thankfully, we caught it early this time.  Hubby came downstairs, grabbed the spare pump we now keep on hand, and went to install it.   (He's already replaced two since we moved in six years ago so he felt it wise to always have a second pump ready to go to prevent late night hardware store runs)

That's when he realized it wasn't a pump failure at all, but that the floating switch that makes the pump flush when the hole gets full was being held down by the power cord.  Hubby lifted the cord off the float and the pump went crazy.  It did a continuous flushing for the next half hour.

I grabbed the broom and started sweeping the water to the floor drain.  The whole time I just kept thinking how fortunate we were that I'd cleaned out the basement this past October.  If this minor flood had happened just five months ago, we would have had a real disaster on our hands.  As it was, it resulted in only a minor inconvenience.  My cleanup efforts included a few empty cardboard boxes that were wet, three soaked stuffed animals, and some soggy paper airplanes.  There were a few random toys on the floor (roller skates, a football, plasma cars), but they were only wet on plastic parts, so no harm done.

While a flooded basement wasn't exactly the welcome home I was hoping for, it could have been a whole lot worse.  One more day and our carpet would have been under water.  One more day away from having to file an insurance claim and call in the restoration experts.  A few months ago and I would have been throwing away a whole lot more than a few empty cardboard boxes and paper airplanes.

Thank you, Lord, that it was just a minor inconvenience that only took a half hour of cleanup instead of a real disaster.