How Much Do You REALLY Have?

Having only been married for two years, we sure have accumulated the stuff. Especially with home-ownership. Having an empty room just looks... dumb. Take our living room for example. We only have one kitchen table. The dining room is currently housing the cat taking a nap in the sun. And a painting. And that's it. So, in response to the empty room situation, we purchased more stuff. (For the other bedrooms and living room, not the dining room.) In truth, we only live in half of our house. Without kids taking up space with all of their paraphernalia, we've got unused rooms. Which is a life lesson for us when purchasing a domicile. But nevertheless, we've got a lot of stuff. For just two people. And in this sense, it can be difficult to know if something is missing... or if it is missing to prove you had it in the first place.

Enter the home inventory. In response to our last encounter with movers and several things going missing, being unable to prove this has continually made me grit my teeth and roll my eyes at myself for not keeping better records of our earthly possessions. I am determined that this will not happen again. I originally assumed this would be an extremely daunting task, comprised of either a notebook or clipboard and a pen, slowly and surely, handwriting everything we owned. Unsure as to how to categorize these lists, other than by room, I wanted to see if anyone had created an Excel spreadsheet with different ways to sort and categorize their belongings. After a few Internet searches, I stumbled across a different method completely. The Insurance Information Institute has some wonderful software to download for free! This software is called Know Your Stuff and is a whole program that allows you to add photos of the exterior of your house, add and title your own rooms, and add items to each room. The individual item you add is titled however you want, there are categories you can assign it to, (ex. major appliance, linens, artwork, jewelry, etc.) the quantity, how much it would cost to replace, when and where you made the purchase, make, model, serial number and description boxes. The other cool thing about the item you're adding, is you can add a photo and a scanned receipt to the file. Then you can look at how much you really have in valuables, either by room or category. This is really a wonderful tool to have. While my original assumption of this task taking some time to accomplish is indeed correct, I have found a way to make it fun and easy. Plus now I'll know if we have enough insurance to cover everything we've got!