Week #50 Organized Home Challenge
Create A Personal Home Inventory
Your challenge this week is to create a personal home inventory to be able to present to an insurance company if the need ever arose.
The first question that might be coming to your mind is why should I create a household inventory? It sure sounds like a lot of work.
Well, creating one does require some effort, but that effort is well worth it. The reason is that although we don't like to think about these things much, our homes and possessions can easily be detroyed by fire or natural disasters, or stolen from us.
That is why we have insurance. To rebuild our homes and restore our possessions when things outside of our control happen. However, if you've got to file an insurance claim you've got to both know what was lost, and also be able to prove you owned it, to be able to get compensated for it. That is where an inventory becomes useful.
Are you new here? This challenge about creating a personal home inventory is part of the 52 Weeks To An Organized Home Challenge. (Click the link to learn how to join us for free for future and past challenges if you aren't already a regular reader).
You could create an exhaustive inventory of everything you own, down to the pencil or dust bunny, but that is too much trouble, and not worth your time. The inventory I suggest focuses on the big stuff, and uses short cuts to help you maximize the usefulness of your inventory for the least amount of effort.
Step 1: Gather Your Equipment And Supplies
To create your personal home inventory easily I suggest that you take lots of digital photos and/or use a video camera to go through your home documenting the stuff you own.
Here is the equipment and other things you should gather together for this process:
- Digital camera and/or video camera
- 2 CDs or DVDs to burn the photos or video onto
- Scanner (optional)
- Pen
- Printable home inventory checklist*
- Printable home inventory forms*
* I've created both of these printable documents for you to fill out. Just click the links to get copies of them for yourself.
 Home Inventory Checklist |
 Home Inventory Forms |
Step 2: Walk Through Your Home Room By Room Documenting Your Belongings
Using your camera or video equipment go systematically, room by room, throughout your home documenting your possessions.
Don't get bogged down with this step though. Focus mainly on the big ticket items, and large groups of items, instead of trying to inventory every single object separately.
To help you with this step in the challenge I've written a quick article about how to make your home inventory video or photos, so check it out for additional tips.
Step 3: Gather Any Readily Accessible Receipts Or Documentation About Big Ticket Items
The next step in creating your personal home inventory is to gather any readily accessible receipts or other documentation about the big ticket items in your home that you inventoried.
This additional documentation is not necessary to have, so don't worry about it if you don't have it, but it is just additional proof that you owned the item, and also its value.
For the future, as you buy new items for your home that are of large value you can place these receipts with your inventory to make it more thorough. (You can reference the Create a Personal Tax Organizer System and Organize Receipts Challenge for more ideas on how to organize your receipts).
You can either scan or photo copy these additional documents to keep with the CD or DVD you will burn in the next step.
Step 4: Create Multiple Copies Of Your Personal Home Inventory
Once you've taken your photos and/or video, filled out the forms, and gathered any additional documentation about any items in your inventory, the next step is to make multiple copies of all this information.
The simplest way to do this is to scan any paper, digitize all of the information, and burn it onto multiple CDs or DVDs. If you can't scan items you can just make photo copies of the most important paper items for safekeeping, along with some type of copies of the photos and/or videos.
You can also also store copies onto the cloud, if you don't want to make CDs or DVDs.
Step 5: Make Sure To Store At Least One Copy Of Your Inventory Outside Your Home
The final step in making your personal home inventory is to store at least one copy of it outside your home. You can place it in a safe deposit box or leave it at a trusted friend or family members' home, but whatever you do, get it out of your own house.
The reason for this is that if your home is destroyed, or your possessions stolen, you may no longer have access to the copy of your inventory that you'll keep in your home. And of course, that is the type of situation in which you really need to access your inventory. So, don't skip this final step.
You should also periodically update your inventory as you acquire new possessions, and get rid of old ones. I suggest doing this once a year. If you stick with me through all the challenges in the 52 Weeks To An Organized Home Challenge we'll come back to this challenge again next year and you can just update it again then.
Listen To Taylor's Video Tips For This Week's Organized Home Challenge & Declutter 365 Missions
Do you want more in-depth tips and instructions for how to do this week's missions and challenge all about creating a home inventory? If so, I've got recorded video tips from me, Taylor, from the video archives in the Declutter 365 Premium group, all about this week's challenge and missions.
These video tips are available on demand in the archives, once you're a member of the group.
In Week #50's video I discussed the following topics, among others:
- Goal setting and identifying your priorities for the New Year
- Why you should create a home inventory
- How to create a home inventory the easy way (or at least easier)
- Declutter 365 missions for the coming week
I suggest watching the video archive for the week, perhaps while you're doing some decluttering or cleaning around your home, before starting the week's missions and Challenge, and then you'll be able to breeze through this week's worth of decluttering missions, as well as organize what's necessary for the 52 Week Organized Home Challenge, based on the advice and instructions within those videos.
It really is like having me, Taylor, available, 24-7, as your decluttering and organizing coach, for every area of your home!
Plus, once you're a member of Declutter 365 Premium you get access to not only this video, but all the videos for the 52 weeks of the year, for 5 years (that's over 260 videos available in the archives!)
Get This Miscellaneous Decluttering Checklist + 32 Other Decluttering Checklists For Your Home
Right now you're decluttering your home, and there's a lot of items to declutter.
I've done the hard work of breaking down these tasks into smaller more manageable steps for you, so you don't get overwhelmed or worry you're forgetting a task, and you can go at the pace you want, whether that's fast or slow.
In addition, you can tackle these decluttering tasks in whatever order you want when you use these checklists!
Tell Me How The Personal Home Inventory Challenge Is Going For You
I would love to know how this week's challenge about creating a personal home inventory is going for you. You can tell me your progress or give me more ideas for how you've made your own inventory below in the comments.
In addition, I love before and after pictures, and stories about your successes. You can get featured in the Creative Storage Solutions Hall Of Fame if you send in information about what you've done for this challenge. You've worked hard to get organized, so now here's your chance to show off!
Sneak Peek For Next Week's Challenge
We're working on our homes slowly, one area at a time, so don't get too distracted from this week's challenge.
However, just to give you a glimpse of what we're working on next, we're going to focus on organizing pet supplies. After all, pets are part of our household and families too!
Make Sure You Make The Most Of These 52 Organizing Challenges
Get your copy of the printable one page 52 Week Organized Home Challenge schedule for the year here, so you can see all the challenges we're working on.
Further, if you'd like to join a community of others who are all commmitted to these organizing challenges and corresponding decluttering missions, and want more interaction with me, Taylor, video archives of Taylor providing more tips for each of these challenges and missions, as well as live monthly group coaching sessions focusing on the skills and habits necessary to maintain your home from now on, I'd urge you to join the private and exclusive Declutter 365 Premium Facebook group (you can learn more about it at the link).
In addition, have you gotten your Declutter 365 Products yet, to make sure you can get even more assistance with decluttering and organizing your home this year? There are both free products (like the Declutter 365 calendar, a $20 value), as well as add-ons, such as daily text messages, planner stickers, and a Premium Facebook group, as well as a pack of printabe decluttering checklists.
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I would love to hear from you, sharing your thoughts, questions, or ideas about this topic, so leave me a comment below. I try to always respond back!