We have two housemates in our Minneapolis house. They pay us minimal rent and are responsible for shoveling the snow and mowing the lawn, plus having them there means the house doesn't sit empty for extended periods. Both are people that Smokey knows from work and are responsible and pleasant folks. It has been a good arrangement for everyone concerned.
However.
Apparently sometime last May or June they started putting our mail on a particular shelf on a stand in the dining room but without saying anything about it. Until last weekend, when one of them happened to mention to Smokey that, Gee, he had a lot of mail on that shelf and didn't he want to look at it? Smokey brought home several pounds of mail to go through. Approximately 99.47% of what is addressed to us at that address is junk mail, since we changed our mailing address for everything important when we moved here in 1999. Except, apparently, for a couple of minor things: property taxes and homeowner's insurance.
We discovered that, 1, a city housing inspector had issued us a citation for a sagging gutter on the garage in June, which citation has since escalated to assessments and probable forfeiture of our first-born, and 2, our insurance had lapsed as of July 11 (yikes!)
In our defense, both property taxes and homeowner's insurance were part of our mortgage payment until late 2006, when we refinanced and they became separately billable. The city sent the 2007 property tax bill before the housemates started their tidying practice with the mail; Smokey saw it, brought it to me in Wisconsin, and I paid the taxes. But as far as the city was concerned, the Minneapolis address was our mailing address and so the inspection citation was sent there. We had never had to pay insurance separately before and [insert big "Duh!"] we never thought of it.
Today we are in the process of rectifying the errors. To our credit we had a little help in the dunderhead department, but still... I shudder to think of what would have happened if there had been a fire / burglary / flood / tornado / earthquake during the six-month period we were uninsured.
If you can't be smart, be lucky.
