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Entry bubble Prepare a Home Inventory – Now!

By: Sommer | January 04, 2008 | Category: Home and Family

Now is the perfect time to prepare a home inventory. It can help you when planning for replacement of furnishings and equipment, purchasing insurance, filing insurance claims, determining your net worth, planning your estate, and more.Living Room

If, like me, you’ve never created a home inventory it sounds like a pretty overwhelming task, doesn’t it? There’s good news – you’ll only have to do it once! In the future, you’ll just have to update your inventory when you purchase new and discard old possessions. If you’d rather hire someone to do an inventory for you, the National Association of Home Inventory Professionals can help you find a professional.

So, where to start?  You can take several different approaches to the inventory like going room-by-room, categorizing your possessions (electronics, furniture, appliances, etc.), newest to oldest, or most to least expensive.  Next, choose the method you’ll use to record all the information.  A simple notebook will suffice, or, you can download a worksheet, take photos, make a video, or even use a computer program.

Regardless of which method you choose, record information such as brand or manufacturer, date purchased, serial number, purchase price, and estimated replacement value.  You can also check with your insurance company to see what information they'll need about your property in the event you have to file a claim.  If you’re a receipt saver like me, now’s the time they’ll come in handy.

Record information about the following items:

  • furniture, carpets, and drapes
  • antiques, artwork and collectibles
  • appliances
  • clothing and other closet contents
  • computer equipment and electronics
  • musical instruments
  • sports equipment
  • garage, attic, and tool shed contents
  • toys, books, and CDs
  • silver and china
  • jewelry and any other valuable items

Once you’ve completed the inventory, keep it in a safe place like a safety deposit box or a fireproof box.  It's a good idea to make a couple copies of the inventory and keep them in different locations. 

Post your stories about how having a home inventory (or not having one) affected your life.  They’ll help light a fire under me (and maybe others) to get one done!

| Comments [7] | envelope Email This Entry | Tags: disaster   emergency   home   insurance   inventory   property   sommer  

Comments:

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Best place to keep it, online. You can use something like Google Docs or Zoho db. If you store it there, it's safe [unless you forget about it], provided it is only a document, description, or photo. 20 minute long video files will need to stored some where else.

Posted by Citizen Jmaximus on January 04, 2008 at 07:22 AM EST #

To keep my home inventory online (away from fire, flood and thieves), I started to use Namminik. www.namminik.com

It automatically attaches a picture to my items as I enter them (grabs them from the Internet, I imagine). It looks like it's free too.

Posted by Senor Safe on January 21, 2008 at 02:37 PM EST #

Great post! As one of the NAHIP service providers you referenced in your article, I thought I would share another resource that we utilize for our clients who want to store their inventory online. Check out A Safe Spot (http://asafespot.com).

Posted by Bastion Home & Business Blog on January 25, 2008 at 06:21 AM EST #

I gone through such a horrible experience because i did not inventory everything in my home. We had a horrible house fire out here and it left me with a couple of rooms completely destroyed. I had a plasma tv, worth 4000 dollars bought at best buy, A complete modern furniture set purchased at http://www.my-homefurniture.com, and a whole room full of electronic equipment completely destroyed. But it was actually the little things that mattered most. A huge amount of baseball cards worth thousands.
All in all it is defintely worth keeping inventory just for insurance sake!

Posted by Phillip Secroro on March 25, 2008 at 04:48 PM EDT #

Phillip,
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm so sorry to hear about your loss! This is the perfect reason why we should all prepare an inventory of our belongings. I hope you're able to get back on your feet soon.
Sommer

Posted by Sommer on March 25, 2008 at 04:57 PM EDT #

Hi Sommer,

Great article, very relevant with wildfire season coming up, and actually starting early here in California. We are currently getting ready to launch a new online based home inventory platform called MyVault that is extremely easy to use and as secure as online banking. I'd like to invite everyone to check out the home page where you can sign up to test out the Beta version for free, which should be out just before the summer. As a thank you for testing it out we are also offering 6 free months of service once it is live.

And keep up with the good articles, I look forward to reading more of them!

Ryan
Founder - MyVault
www.myvaulthome.com

Posted by Ryan on April 28, 2008 at 03:39 PM EDT #

Most people do not consider a home inventory an important activity, mostly because of the pain in gathering information. Its probably better to gradually build up information rather than try to do it all in one shot. The best approach for me has been to run around home with a camera and then upload pictures into my PC, eventually add information like value and condition information.

BTW I used Stuff-It http://www.lytecube.com/solutions/stuffit/

Posted by Girish on June 11, 2008 at 11:43 PM EDT #

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