What a home inventory is, and why it matters
A home inventory, sometimes called a household inventory or personal property inventory, has two parts. The first is visual: photos or video of every room, including inside closets and cabinets. The second is a written list of the items that carry most of the value, with the details an adjuster needs to identify them and price a replacement.
It matters because of how claims work. After a theft, fire, or storm, you are asked to list what was lost and support what it was worth. Without an inventory, that list comes from memory, often while you are dealing with temporary housing and everything else a loss brings. People forget things, and anything left off the list is not paid for. With an inventory, you hand over a list and the evidence behind it.
A finished inventory does one more job: it tells you what your belongings are worth in total, which you can compare against the personal property limit on your policy. Many homeowners never check whether that limit is high enough. Our personal property coverage calculator does the comparison in a few minutes.
What to record for each item
You do not need a row for every spoon. Video covers the everyday contents of a room. Written rows are for items that are valuable, hard to replace, or easy to forget. For those, record:
How to build a home inventory, step by step
- Pick one place to record everything. Choose a spreadsheet, a printed checklist, or an app, and stick with it. A free template with columns for room, item, brand, model, serial number, purchase date, price, and replacement cost is enough to start. What matters is that every item ends up in the same list.
- Walk each room on video. Record a slow video of every room, narrating what you see. Open closets, cabinets, and drawers as you go. A two-minute video per room captures far more than you would ever type, and it is strong evidence that you owned the items in it.
- Detail the valuable and hard-to-replace items. For electronics, appliances, furniture, jewelry, art, instruments, tools, and collections, add a row with brand, model, serial number, and a close-up photo of the item and its label. These items make up most of a claim's value, so they deserve the extra minute each.
- Record replacement cost, not what you paid. For each detailed item, note what a comparable new item costs today. That is what most policies with replacement cost coverage will pay, and it is the number that tells you whether your coverage limit is high enough.
- Attach proof of ownership. Save receipts, order confirmations, appraisals, warranty cards, and manuals alongside the items they belong to. Search your email for order confirmations; online retailers keep years of purchase history.
- Store copies away from the house and keep them current. Keep the inventory, photos, and videos somewhere a fire or flood cannot reach, such as a cloud folder, and share access with someone you trust. Update it after big purchases, gifts, and moves, and review it once a year at policy renewal.
If you want a ready-made structure, our free home inventory checklist template has the columns above and a section for every room.
Room-by-room checklist
Use this list to make sure the video and the written rows cover everything that is easy to overlook.
Living and family rooms
Sofas and chairs, tables, rugs, lamps, televisions and sound systems, game consoles, streaming devices, artwork and framed prints, books and media, and decorative items.
Kitchen and dining
Refrigerator, range, dishwasher, and microwave if you own them, plus small appliances, cookware, knives, dishes, glassware, silverware, the dining set, and the pantry. Kitchens are routinely undercounted because their value is spread across hundreds of small items.
Bedrooms and closets
Beds, mattresses, dressers, nightstands, linens, and above all clothing, shoes, coats, and accessories. Open every drawer and closet on video. Clothing for a household often costs more to replace than the bedroom furniture.
Bathrooms
Towels, small electrics such as hair dryers and electric toothbrushes, and the contents of cabinets.
Home office
Computers, monitors, printers, phones and tablets, the desk and chair, and any equipment you use for work. Business property at home often has its own low limit on a homeowners policy, so note it separately.
Garage, basement, and storage
Power and hand tools, lawn equipment, bicycles, sporting and camping gear, holiday decorations, and everything in bins. These are the spaces people forget first.
Valuables
Jewelry, watches, art, collectibles, instruments, and firearms, each with a close-up photo and any appraisal. Many policies cap theft of jewelry and some other categories at a low amount, so these may need to be scheduled separately.
Valuing your belongings
Record what it would cost to buy a comparable item new today, not what you paid years ago. For electronics and appliances, look up the current equivalent model. For furniture and clothing, a reasonable estimate per room is fine; you are not expected to price every shirt.
How your policy pays affects what you receive. A replacement cost policy pays what a comparable new item costs. An actual cash value policy subtracts depreciation, so an eight-year-old sofa is paid at a fraction of its replacement price. Your declarations page says which you have. Once you have a total, compare it with your personal property limit; if the total is higher, you are underinsured. The personal property calculator walks through both the limit and depreciation.
Where to keep it
The inventory has to survive whatever it documents. Keep the list, photos, and videos in a cloud folder you can reach from any device, and give a trusted relative or friend access. A second copy on a drive kept outside the house adds a layer of protection. Paper copies are fine as a supplement, but not in a desk drawer at home as the only copy.
Store receipts, appraisals, warranties, and manuals in the same place, named so you can match them to items. Many people keep these alongside closing documents and insurance policies as a single home record; our guide to home documentation covers what else belongs there.
Keeping it current
An inventory from five years ago is better than none, but it misses everything you have bought since. Add items as you buy them; forwarding order confirmations to a dedicated folder is an easy habit. Then review the whole list once a year, ideally when your policy renews, and after any big change: moving, renovating, a wedding or new baby, or inheriting belongings.
Beyond insurance
The same household inventory is useful in other moments. Before a move, it becomes a packing and valuation list for the moving company and any transit coverage. In estate planning, it helps a family know what exists and where. For renters, it is just as important as for owners, since a renters policy covers your belongings and you choose the limit yourself.
Tools for the job
A phone camera and a spreadsheet are enough. If you would rather use an app, our comparison of the best home management apps covers the options available today, including those with photo-based item recognition.
We are building MyHomePlatform to connect the inventory to the question it exists to answer: whether your insurance covers what you own. It is in development and not available yet. If you would like to hear when it launches, join the waitlist.