Many insurance experts recommend keeping an updated home inventory to help protect yourself in the event of a home insurance claim

A home inventory, if you're not familiar with the term, is a catalog of all the items of value in your home. Many insurance experts recommend keeping an updated home inventory to help protect yourself in the event of a home insurance claim. By now, you're probably looking around the room, considering what a daunting task building a home inventory might be; there's stuff everywhere — and when you lift up one thing, there's something else underneath it.

Fortunately, creating home inventory isn't as difficult as it sounds, and we'll share some tips to make the process easier while helping ensure that you don't miss anything important.

For most households, the biggest challenge in creating home inventory is finding the time and making the commitment to complete the process. Once you get started, however, you'll start to recognize the value of building home inventory as you realize the value of all your belongings. It's also likely that you'll find some things that can be sold, donated, or thrown away. When you're done with your home inventory, you'll not only know what you have and how much it’s worth, but you’ll probably have a bit more elbow room as well.

Focus on valuables

In an average household, most of the items in our homes aren't particularly valuable on their own but are costly to replace if you had to replace several items — or perhaps all of them. Still, it doesn't make much sense to inventory every knife, fork, and tabletop doily. If the silverware is real antique silver, however, you'll definitely want to document its value. If it's particularly valuable, you may even want to purchase a rider to fully protect your collection. When cataloging valuables in your home, include jewelry, cameras, electronics, computers, expensive rugs or furniture, and anything else that can’t be easily purchased at the local bargain store.

Use a spreadsheet and photos

If you own any office software, your home inventory is the perfect opportunity to press it into service. Document your valuables on a spreadsheet, which allows you to assign a price to each item. Also, include digital photos of the items in your home. The photo documentation can be useful if you have a claim and need to demonstrate your loss to an insurance adjuster. There are also several free online office software suites you can use.

Keep receipts

Keep the receipts for anything expensive that you bring into your home. There likely isn't a need to keep the original receipt, however. Instead, you can scan the receipts or take a digital photograph. Don’t fret if you don’t have old receipts but save the new ones.

Use cloud storage

Imagine a fire or water damage at your home. Either of these common types of home insurance claims can destroy not just your belongings but also the home inventory you've built. Once you've created your home inventory, music cloud storage account that will allow you to easily access your online home inventory from any computer if the need arises.

Have any questions? We can help.

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