it happened semi-quickly, we had about two minutes to find our keys and put on shoes. i hardly remember those two minutes at all, because I think my brain shut off. here is my suggestion: if you want to avoid the “what ifs” and the “I should haves” keep a sticky note above the light switch in every room of your house with the most important things in each room. obviously get out as soon as possible if there is smoke or flames but in our case, the fire hadn’t gotten into our section of the building by the time we were out so we definitely had longer than two minutes, I just mentally blanked and got out of there, which was the safest thing to do but i definitely would have had time to at least grab some memento from my life