Locker Clean Up and Flood Prevention

If you live in Toronto, you know what I am talking about when I say it rained a whole lot on Monday. If you aren't from here, the short story is we got a month's worth of rain in only an hour. The subways got flooded, sewers burst all over, closing down roads, and a lot of people lost power. I didn't lose power at home (I think it went out for a moment, but I wasn't home), but we lost power all day Tuesday at work so I got to stay home!

I was talking to my Dad yesterday and we were discussing the after effect of big storms like this- flooding. Jeanette over at This Dusty House actually had her basement flood, and was very lucky that her tenants had recently moved out so personal belongings weren't ruined (of course, now they are dealing with structural repairs). You would think, living in a condo, that I wouldn't have flooding problems, but I actually came very close to a bit of a disaster myself. Due to a storm drain bursting, one level of our parking garage got flooded (not this bad, but still). Do you know what is down in our parking garages, besides cars? The storage lockers. Thankfully my locker is located one floor above the flooding, so my stuff is fine. Insurance does cover locker contents, but I don't have much of actual value down there- just stuff I would rather not get ruined!

I decided to spend some time on my "rain day" off from work to clean it up and flood-proof my belongings! It should be noted it has been over a year since I last cleaned the locker up, so this was a needed project anyway.

Exhibit A:

First things first, I removed a whole bunch of stuff so that I actually had some room to get in here!

Then I spent some time playing Tetris with the shelving unit. Even though there is a few inches of clearance at the bottom, I played it safe and moved some boxes of books up to higher shelves, and then moved some water-friendly things down to the lower shelf. This included the two giant bags of DVD cases and Sims games (yes, I play the Sims!). I keep all my DVDs in a CD folder in the condo, but I don't want to throw out the cases in case I want to move them back in some day. However, the cases aren't at all valuable so they can be down in the flood-zone :)

I then sorted everything out as neatly as I could to the other shelves. One day I will want this stuff out again- just no space in my current home! I swear I am not a hoarder.

I then moved over to my Christmas pile. I really would hate if the tree box got wet and ruined, because I find those tree bags they sell too bulky. So I stacked the leftover tile boxes from the balcony floor underneath the tree- the tiles are waterproof.

Except then I was worried about the tree tipping over, since one box of tiles was only semi-full and not stable. So I rigged up the strap from my laptop case (that I rarely use) from the handle of the box to the ceiling. #genius

I also reorganized the decorations into a big bin to keep them nice and safe.

Finally, I loaded everything back in! I put my large suitcase in the empty cooler (it was my Dad's idea to use bins for anything on the floor). Now I feel a lot more secure about everything in here! Hopefully we just won't have any more flooding :)

How do you keep your belongings safe in your basement or locker?