Let’s Look Inside Your Home – A How To Guide to Taking a Home Inventory 

It’s best to get ahead of your home inventory before it gets ahead of you. Start it now, before it becomes too much to handle!

When to Do a Home Inventory:

• When you move: This is a great time to take inventory of your belongings because you are in the process of getting it all situated, and probably even getting rid of items you don’t have anymore.
• Spring Cleaning: Another great time to take your inventory is when you go through your house and clean things out for that annual garage sale! 
• Now: This is sort of a joke, but it’s funny because it’s true! If you don’t plan on moving or aren’t into the idea of a garage sale, you should really get on your home inventory now! There’s no reason to wait on protecting yourself, so hop to it! 

Where to Start: 

• Choose a contained area to get this going! For instance, going through each of your bathrooms and logging what home decor, products, and so on you have in there will be a small project that you can finish in less than an afternoon. Then continue this process: move onto the bedrooms, closets, living room, family room, dining room, kitchen, office/library, and throughout your whole home. Before you know it, you’ll be finished and prepared for what could happen!
• Recent purchases in another great way to go through your inventory, by logging the purchases you have made, you’ll be able to start a consistent digital log that you continuously update. 

How to Log:

• Spreadsheets: Using a digital spreadsheet, that’s organized by room, will allow you to log what you have with basic information about the product, the location of it in the room, the cost of the item, where it was from, serial numbers (if the tem has it, normally found on the back or bottom of items), and the date you logged it. 
• Videos: Taking a video of each room and the contents within it, allows you to have a visual representation of the items you have in your home. This should be done in small bursts to avoid overly large files being stored, so doing it by room and by section of the room will be a big help to that. For example – your logging your bedroom. Video the sleeping area, your getting ready area, and your closet in three separate videos.
• Photos: This is the most time consuming method to this, and won’t be able to tell you how much something costs, where it was from, and so on. This will, however, serve you in the long term if you are trying to remember something after a disaster strikes. 

Thing to Remember: 

• Special or high value items may need special coverage outside of your home coverage policy, so you’ll want to log those with your insurance company and be sure they are aware of it before something may happen. 
• Items in an offsite storage center need to be logged as well. They’re just as much a part of your home, even if they aren’t in the home. Think of these items like you kid that’s gone off to college, still part of the family, just not in the home anymore!
• Keeping proof of value is also an important thing to do if you have the ability. Taking a photo of the receipt or finding a link to the product online to put into your log will serve you well. 
• Whatever method you choose to log your home inventory, you need to make sure it is stored in a safe place! If you choose to do it on paper, you need to store that in a safe box off site, if it’s a spreadsheet or videos/photos, we highly suggest saving it to a cloud storage of some kind like Google Drive, DropBox, and the many other online storage options. Don’t simply rely on a harddrive, because what are you going to do if it melts in a house fire or ends up in the river due to a flood? 
• Doing this home inventory will help you prove your loss – this can be through receipts, photos/videos/, and even a friend saying that they have seen that product in your home before (although this last one is the weakest form). 
• The limit on your policy is what an insurance agency will pay UP to, this doesn’t mean you are going to get the full claim payment or more than what your coverage is. 
• Lastly, don’t get overwhelmed! This is a big project, we won’t try to fool you on that, but once get started, keep going! You can do it, and it doesn’t need to be completed in one day!

We hope this cleared up any questions or confusion you may have had, or simply taught you something new today! As always, we’re here for you – call, (765) 644-8847, or email, quotes@howardwebbins.com, today to discuss your options and any questions you may have regarding your insurance plan! 

Article written by contract writer and digital media coordinator: Candace Cox. You can reach her at socials@howardwebbins.com or candacecox96@gmail.com.