Preparedness isn’t just about getting your survival gear, packing up your MREs and hitting the road. It’s about being prepared for everyday life, regardless of what it throws at you.
In the event of a local disaster or even an emergency at your own home, having a documentation of your valuables is a huge help in dealing with insurance companies later. All of them will tell you to have photos or videos of your possessions in all of your rooms as a way to document what you really have when it is time for an appraisal of the damages.
Create a Virtual Home Inventory
Do a quick video with your phone or take shots with your camera through each room (no, you really don’t need to clean it first, but be thorough!) and make sure you get those things that are really important to you, plus the serial numbers of electronics if you can.
It won’t take long, and it’s better to have a digital recording than to try to remember things when your life has been turned upside down. Send a copy to the ‘cloud’, email yourself, keep a copy on a zip disk with your emergency kit, and a paper copy of your inventory list in your emergency binder and send a copy to your insurance agent. Using a company’s app also stores it on their servers.
Use an Insurance Company App
- Allstate’s Digital Locker Home Inventory App
- State Farm HomeIndex Inventory App
- Check with your insurance company to see if they offer an app
Your thoughts: Have you had to use a home inventory video or sheet to recover damaged property? How did it work for you?
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Good ideas and links, but I just had to comment on the zip disk. If you truly still have one of these I can’t stress how much you should upgrade to a USB memory stick. They are cheap, exponentially larger and more reliable. Sign up for a free Google or Microsoft account and use their cloud storage.