Take a Home Inventory Today
A home inventory is an accurate list of all your personal possessions and the values of those items. It is something you want to have to determine how much homeowner’s coverage you really need. It is also necessary when filing a claim to ensure everything is accurate. Police could also use it find and identify stolen items. You should know the steps for taking a home inventory today.
- Go through your whole house: The first step is to make a quick plan to go through your whole house. You need to sort through your possessions and identify everything that is valuable. You want to forget nothing. Make a list of the rooms you need to go through in order. Cross the rooms off the list as you go to ensure you see and log everything.
- Record all the information you can: Record all the information you can about your possessions in a notebook, a digital document or on premade forms. You want someone who has never seen the item before to be able to identify it just from the description. Write down a descriptive name, the color, dimensions and any other information like model numbers, serial numbers and words on labels. Take multiple digital pictures of each item showing it overall and the smaller unique features.
- Get proof of purchase whenever possible: You want to get proof of purchase for each item if possible. Print invoices from online orders, find old receipts or call retailers to get a proof of purchase. If nothing is available, then try to find something similar of the same age and estimate the value.
- Protect your finished inventory: Protect your inventory once it is finished. You do not want all that work to go to waste. Keep your home inventory somewhere else like a safe deposit box, a friend’s house or at work. You should make copies. A better idea is to put it online and copy it into several different places or put a copy on a thumb drive to ensures you always have the inventory when you need it.
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