Studies indicate that a homeowner, who suffers a significant traumatic loss in their home, only remembers about two-thirds of their belongings when reporting a claim to the adjuster. Don’t lose out on valuable items in your home because you cannot remember what they were. To avoid the effort of remembering every valuable item in your home, or worse, losing valuable items because you forgot about them, Deland, Gibson suggests you conduct an inventory of all the items in your home.
This task can be daunting, so we’ve broken it down into steps:
1. Do a “Spring Cleaning” now. Clean thoroughly so you can see all the items you need to document. Cleaning your home will make the process easier and quicker.
2. Set goals. Walk through your home to determine how long you think it might take. Then, determine a specific amount of time each week to devote to inventory, and break your goals down even smaller to tackle only one room at a time.
3. Start your inventory
• Document your most valuable items first such as large furniture, electronics, antiques
and paintings.
• Take a digital picture of each item, or take a video of each room, making sure each
item is recorded.
• Contact Deland, Gibson about a home inventory spreadsheet. A spreadsheet should
include entries with an item such as serial numbers, inscriptions on jewelry, number
amounts of items, and an estimated value.
4. Secure your inventory. If you have taken a video or have digital pictures, make sure you have a backup of these on an external drive in case your computer is damaged.
Let Deland, Gibson help you! Send us any inventory lists or pictures/video and we will store it in your file. This will make things much easier in the unfortunate event of a claim.
Call us to learn more about conducting a home inventory at 781.237.1515 or visit our Web site: https://delandgibson.com/.
