How to create a household inventory

This past summer I celebrated my 11th year of marriage.  During our marriage I have lived in 6 different residences with my husband.  In all of my married life I must admit that I’ve never once properly cataloged our household items for insurance purposes.    Have you?  Thankfully our family has never suffered a major loss due to fire or natural disaster.  We’ve had our share of loss and trials but nothing on a very large scale. Nothing that would have required me to have my affairs in order for insurance purposes. But why continue to risk it?

Now that we are (thankfully) back in our home I’ve decided to get some things in order that I’ve been putting off.  First on my list was creating a household inventory.

The three main ways to inventory your possessions are:

• Written sheet for each room including serial numbers along with purchase price, date and receipts of large ticket items
• Photographs of each room with descriptions
• Video of each room

I’ve decided to do all three because I can see how utilizing each method would best convey the contents, replacement value, and condition of our personal belongings.

After putting together my room by room sheets, I took photographs of the rooms and then included everything in a binder titled “Household Inventory  2011” which I then put into a fireproof safe (or you may want to keep yours in a bank’s safety deposit box.

I cannot tell you how good it feels to have accomplished this. By doing this while we were moving back into our home I did add some extra work for myself, but I must admit it was easier to catalog everything as I was unpacking it piece by piece.

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