5 Items to Save

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Burning Down the House.”

Today the prompters over at The Daily Post challenge us to choose our most precious possessions. They tell us that our house is on fire; assuming that all people and pets are already safe, what five items would you grab to save if you could?

It’s an interesting question because when I began to think about it I realized that a lot of the obvious items are things that could actually be replaced. My and my husband’s wedding album, for example, is precious, but our photographer keeps all his clients’ info on file so that things like that can be replaced. Toys and clothes and electronics and video games can all be replaced as well, so while it would be frustrating to lose them it wouldn’t be a huge deal to try and save them. Even losing the first print copy of my book wouldn’t be the end of the world because I could always order another one, and though it wouldn’t be the first one it would be exactly the same.

So what would I save?

Well, first and foremost, I’d grab the decorative tin that my aunt gave me when I got married. It’s lovely, but not exactly the most precious item in the world, so why would I save it? Well it’s a CD case, and it houses not only the CD with all our wedding photos on it, but also two flash drives that hold copies of all of our digital photos from since before our daughter was born, as well as a large amount of photos from my childhood that I scanned and saved on my computer. I care about all these photos enough to have copies of them on both of the dual hard drives on my laptop, as well as those two flash drives, so of course I would save those.

Second, I would save my daughter’s little stuffed Rocket Raccoon toy. Pretty much every toy she has could easily enough be replaced, and this little guy probably could do (with time, since he has to be ordered from away), but she just love him so much that it would break my heart to see her without him for however long it would take to get a new one.

Come on, look at that love. Tell me your heart wouldn’t break.

Third, I would save my jewelry box, not because there’s anything of enormous value in it, but because there’s several pieces that my husband bought me over the years that I would hate to lose, as well as several pieces from my childhood, and keepsakes from loved ones.

Fourth, and this may sound ridiculous, but I would save my and my husband’s cellphones. Because, let’s face it, in this world you have to be connected, and even if we lost all our other technology, we would be able to work through the disaster if we had our phones so that we could do whatever we needed to do, contact whoever we needed to contact, and so on.

That last one may have technically counted as two, so you can stop reading now if you want, but personally I’m going to pretend that the two cellphones count as one item, and I’m going to save a fifth. And that fifth would be the first print copy of my book. But wait, didn’t I say that that one wouldn’t be important because I could always order another? Well, yeah, but I’d still probably cry like a little baby if the first print copy of the first book I ever published was burned to ash. So…yeah. >.>

What five items would you save from a fire if you knew that your loved ones were already safe?