
What I Learned About The In-Between Things
By Adam Johnson
Are there disaster situations where you would want to save non-essential material possessions? Probably so.
When your life isn't at risk, but your possessions are.

Make no mistake. Family is what's important in life and the value of material things cannot come close in comparison. As long as you have each other, you are truly rich. In an immediate emergency, trying to save your possessions could get you killed. But this situation was different.

Losing your house is a tragedy, and there's no way to make it not a tragedy. That's not what I'm trying to do here. This is about easy, simple things you can do to reduce the impact of such an event. It's not worrying and obsessing. It's preparing.
Three categories
All you need to do is divide the things in your life into three categories:
- Necessities
- Non-Necessities
- Sentimental (In-Between Things)
You may have the first two already separated out, especially if you are a prepper, but I will go over these, too, to show where they fall in relation to the in-between things.
Necessities.
This is what preppers live for. Collecting the supplies you need to survive for when all hell breaks loose. Shelter. Water. Medical supplies. When you are sheltering in place, these supplies can be extensive; but, since this article is focusing on evacuation, these are the things that will go in your "bug out bag". Here is an Ultimate Guide to 72 Hour Kits and bug out bags. Bug out bags can also carry a few of the smaller sentimentals, like a picture of your family.
Non-Necessities.
To minimize the impact of losing your possessions (including some of the sentimental ones), do three things:
- Get it insured. Homeowner's insurance if you own, renters insurance if you rent. Your landlord's policy most likely doesn't cover your personal possessions.
- Get it digitized. Take well-lit photos of your belongings in every room of the house, especially the valuable things. This is for the insurance company, but it may also allow the memory of things to live on. Scan and digitize photo albums, documents, journals and letters. In many cases, the digitized will not be the same as holding the original, but it's better than nothing.
- Back it up. If your files were not already valuable to you before, they are now that they contain all of your pictures and precious documents for future generations. There are many options for data backup, and they all have their pros and cons. Cloud storage means your files will always be miles away from any local disaster, while external storage is the most difficult for hackers to access and could make a great addition for your bug out bag.
The In-Between Things.
Not everything on the list has to have some kind of deep meaning. Simply stated, an in-between thing is something an insurance payout cannot replace. You keep that autographed poster of your favorite band because you would rather have it than the money it's worth, right? Might as well put it on the list. Still, the list should be short. If it's not, that either means you curate a personal museum of artifacts, or that you should re-prioritize where material things belong in your life.
The hardest thing, by far, is assessing an incoming disaster and deciding when the risk is significant enough to go to the trouble of moving the belongings on the list out. If you have your list stored alongside your emergency supplies, however, you will be better prepared and equipped to make these decisions in the moment.
Make note of what things you will need help with transporting, like an antique piano. These belong in a subcategory, and you decide beforehand how high the risk has to be before you enlist support in moving them out of the area. You should make friends with your neighbors, so you can help each other during a crisis and so you know who to trust. A stereotypical prepper thinks his neighbors would murder his family for a bottle of ketchup as soon as things go south, but the truth is disasters bring out the best in people more often than they bring out the worst.
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