Last night, me and Colleen decided to put up our Christmas decorations. We lugged the boxes of decorations from the garage into the house. All the decorations used to be stored in cardboard boxes. That is, until last year, when putting everything away, I thought it would be a good idea to combine everything into one giant plastic container.

It was well sealed, in hopes to defend spiders and box elder from making a home amongst the ornaments. We expected to open this container to find everything dry and spider free. But we were horrified with what we found.

There was moisture and mold all over everything! I was shocked. How did so much moisture get into a sealed plastic container?

Our night turned from a cheery Christmas spirit-filled event to a much more somber mood. It felt like a hurricane victim returning to their home after a flood. We went though every item in the box, one by one, and decided if it was salvagable or unsalvagable. All the cardboard had to go, of course. Many metal items were corroded...garbage. Some things just required cleaning off, and some things were not affected at all.

During this itemized inspection, we came across several snowglobes. What was different about these snow globes is that they no longer had water in them! This must have been the water source!

Here's my theory of what happened: After putting away the Christmas decorations last year in the garage, the snowglobes must have frozen and expanded during the cold January and February months. The expansion broke the seal, and when it thawed, everything leaked out all over the rest of the decorations. The watery mess then fermented for the rest of 2008 in a hot garage until yesterday when we discovered it.

Luckily, most of the stuff that was ruined didn't have any real emotional attachment. And we leared a real valuable lesson: Never store snow globes in a freezing cold garage!