Make a Visual Home Inventory Before Disaster Strikes

I live in Southern California, I have lived here most of my life.  Everyone knows about California sunshine, palm trees, and our beaches – it exemplifies summer.  Unfortunately, California is also well known for its many wildfires, due to our dry, hot climate.

I have witnessed a number of wildfires, near and far.  The one that had the most relevance to me happened 8 years ago.  Our neighborhood is located right next to a 22-mile open-land, State Park.  Unfortunately, it caught on fire and burned for many days.  

One day, the wind changed and the fire headed towards our neighborhood.  My 2-year-old son was sick that night.  I remember holding him throughout the night, helping him as he threw up nearly every hour.  

A view from our backyard, the green dome at the bottom of the picture is the top of one of the posts from our fence.

Then came a knock at the door, a fireman was asking us to evacuate.  Evacuate?  What?  How could I, I couldn’t leave my son alone while I frantically packed up the house.  I remember how eerie it looked as I walked outside, the neighborhood thick with smoke, and neighbors were packing up their cars before their escape.  It was very surreal.

What would I take?  We grabbed suitcases and whatever boxes we could find to gather up all of our picture albums, loose pictures, pictures of the kids on the wall, their favorite stuffed animals, our computers and laptops, our important paperwork, like wills and the like, and that’s about it.

My heirloom furniture, passed down through the generations had to stay, there was no time to get a truck somewhere and move it out.  It was a stressful, frantic night.  Fortunately, by the time we knew we had to leave, my son’s stomach had finally settled down.

We were fortunate that night, the backfires the fireman had set did the job and although the fire did come close to our backyards, none of the houses burned down that night.  God was watching over us, we were so thankful.

As I reflect back on this night, I think of the many families before us who lost their homes to fires in Southern California. I can’t imagine losing everything I own.

Losing your house due to a fire or other disaster leaves you with no place to call your home.  Memories are burned up, heirlooms gone along with your favorite chair, the table where you all shared dinners, your child’s uniforms and trophies – gone.

Getting your family out safe as well as having home insurance is the silver lining in such a devastating event.  Figuring out the value of your home is easy, due to market comps in real estate.  But what about its contents?  

When you fill out the insurance paperwork, will you remember about your Aunt’s linens and good china?  Your grandmother’s tea set? How about your entire coin collection? Your musical instruments or all of your Xbox games? Your favorite paintings? Your mom’s antique desk?

Know Your Stuff Home Inventory Tool

Fortunately, there is now an app for that!   Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.), an organization that aims to demystify insurance and how it works, created the KnowYourStuff tool to help you remember your things, should a disaster strike.  KnowYourStuff is available on your computer, iPhone and Google devices.

KnowYourStuff helps you create a photo inventory of the things in your house, apartment, RV, etc. so you will have pictures and your own personal estimates of value for the things most important to you.

I’m in the process of taking inventory in my home with the Know Your Stuff app now.  The app is customizable to you.  You can take a picture of everything in the room and add a value to the contents or your can list items individually.  

Listing each item individually allows you to provide more detail such as purchase price, current price (guestimate), when you bought the item, what brand and model # it is, whether you have an appraisal on it, etc. You can store all of this handy info. along with a picture for every item.

In the app, you can get a listing of all of the items you loaded into the Know Your Stuff app.  I added prices that I either paid for the item originally, or I am guessing how much it would be worth today.  If I have receipts or appraisals, you can upload them to each and every item.  This app becomes your rolodex of all of your important items in your home.

You can add all of your room names to the Know Your Stuff home inventory app and then add the things you have in each room.  The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) recommends that you open the drawers of your dressers and tables when you take a picture, so you can see the contents of the drawers as well.

Don’t forget to inventory your tech too! I’d recommend you make a home inventory of all of your tech and dedicate it to one room like the office or family room.  As you add new tech, add these items to that room.  You will be getting new tech every year, most likely, so don’t forget to keep your Know Your Stuff home inventory app updated.

As you complete your home inventory, the Know Your Stuff app creates statistics to show the value of your home’s belongings.  You can see by my dashboard that I have listed 22 items so far, with most of my value located in our bedroom.  I love the pie chart – it can be broken down by room, by cost of items by room, or by cost of items by category.  

Know Your Stuff already includes a lot of categories to classify your things or you can add your own.  Categories include artwork, furniture, china, electronics, home equipment, gardening supplies, and many more.  You can even add your own customized categories – to make searching for items easier.

It was easy to go from room-to-room and snap photos and classify items right in the app.  I also loved being able to log online and sign into my Know Your Stuff account to continue adding info.  The app makes it easy to create a visual home inventory of your belongings.

The Know Your Stuff home inventory app is available free on both the App Store and Google Play.

A Mom’s Perspective

Take it from someone who knows, when a disaster like fire strikes, you don’t have time to pack your stuff or even take a mental note of what you have.  You just have to leave.  Recording your belongings in the Know Your Stuff home inventory app will bring you peace of mind.

The app can also help you if you’re in a panic to flee your house. As I mentioned earlier, you can add your own customized labels to easily find items you’re looking for…like antiques,china, electronics, etc. But you can also add other labels like Emergency, Must-have’s, etc.  

Labeling your items with this additional category allows you to easily identify what to make in an emergency.  I would add the “emergency” label to items like:

• My son’s favorite stuffed animal
• My kids’ yearbooks
• Our will and important documents (house deed, insurance papers, passports, birth certificates)
• Photo albums & picture frames
• Computers & tablets
• My Mom’s figurines
• Medications
• Purse/wallet
• Clothes
• Cameras
• Phones

If you have the time to pack before you evacuate, looking at the “emergency” category in your Know Your Stuff app will greatly decrease your stress level and allow other family members to see the list to help pack up your things.

Take the time now to download the free Know Your Stuff home inventory app, you’ll be glad you did.  Don’t worry that you don’t have enough time to go room-to-room right now to create your home inventory.  Start one room at a time, as you have time.  

Or let your kids start the home inventory for you, they’ll have a blast with it and will probably be more through than you would.  Then just use the app or log into your account on your computer to fill in your categories, estimated values, and other pertinent info.

The Know Your Stuff home inventory app gives you peace of mind that should a fire or other disaster strike your home and you will better know its value when filling out your insurance claims.