After a fire, a burglary, or serious water damage, your carrier will ask you to list what you lost. People consistently underestimate how hard that is under stress, from memory, without the house to walk through. A home inventory solves it, and it takes an evening.
Why it matters more than people expect
Two reasons. First, undocumented items are often the ones you forget entirely, and unclaimed items are simply money left behind. Second, where an adjuster questions value or ownership, contemporaneous documentation ends the conversation quickly.
The fast version: film it
If you do nothing else, do this. Take your phone, start recording, and walk the house narrating as you go. Open every wardrobe, cupboard, drawer, and the garage. Say what things are and roughly when you bought them. Twenty minutes covers most homes.
Then get it off the phone. Store it somewhere that survives the house burning down. Cloud storage, or emailed to yourself. An inventory that only exists on a device inside the property is not an inventory.
The thorough version: room by room
For each room, write down the item, the make and model, the serial number if it has one, about when you bought it, and about what it cost. Do it in this order:
- Electronics. Computers, TVs, audio gear, cameras, game consoles. Serial numbers matter for theft claims.
- Appliances, including anything built in
- Furniture, the category people undercount most
- Jewelry, watches, and collectibles. See the note below.
- Tools and sports gear. Garages and sheds add up fast.
- Musical instruments
- Clothing. Count it by category rather than one item at a time, but do count it.
Items that need to be listed on their own
Standard policies cap certain categories at a low amount. Jewelry, watches, firearms, fine art, and collectibles are often capped far below their real value. A $9,000 ring may sit under a $1,500 theft cap.
The fix is to schedule those items: list each one on its own with its own limit. Scheduled property is usually covered more broadly, often with no deductible, and it usually covers simple loss too. Send us an appraisal or a receipt and we will add them.
Keep the paperwork with it
Along with the video and the list, keep receipts for big purchases, appraisals for jewelry and art, photos of serial numbers, and a copy of your current declarations page. Keep it all in one folder, in the cloud.
Update it when the house changes
Once a year is plenty for most households, plus after any of these:
- A significant buy
- A renovation or extension
- A marriage, a new baby, or a household member moving in
- Inheriting anything of value
Those same events are good prompts to have us re-check your coverage limits, because the amount of stuff in a house tends to move in one direction.
Want this checked against your actual policy? Send us your declarations page and we will read it properly. Call (503) 285-2546 or request a quote.
