How to Perform a Home Inventory Before It’s Too Late

Our homes are treasure chests — full of all the things most important to us (photo albums, keepsakes) and impactful to our wallets (appliances, technology). To help protect those treasures, keep an up-to-date home inventory with photos, receipts, and serial numbers. Insurance experts at the Insurance Information Institute and regulators at the NAIC note that a detailed inventory speeds claims and helps document losses. Both renters and homeowners insurance can reimburse you for covered losses like fire, theft, or certain natural disasters when you can demonstrate ownership and value.

Given the rise in costly weather and climate disasters, it’s best to have your home inventory prepared well in advance of a potential evacuation. The U.S. set a record 28 billion-dollar disasters in 2023 (NOAA), and 2023 was the hottest year on record globally, trends consistent with more high-impact events. When making a claim, the value you can expect to recover will hinge on the level of detailed information you’re able to provide. Video and photo evidence along with receipts, serial numbers, and warranty information help adjusters value a state-of-the-art 4K TV accurately rather than issuing a lump-sum guesstimate for your whole entertainment system (III).

While the task of cataloguing may seem daunting, a room-by-room plan and the right tools make it manageable—start with a simple video per room, then add serials and receipts over time (NAIC). And the payoff for your labor? Faster, more accurate reimbursement for personal property losses covered by your policy.

How to conduct a home inventory

Decide on an organization method

You have a few options here:

• Take photos and supplement them with a written record
• Take video and narrate the key details
• Download an app

Whichever route you choose, include receipts, warranties, and key details — purchase date, price, brand/model and serial/IMEI — and store them with your record; these are exactly the fields insurers recommend for claim-ready documentation (State Farm, III).

Take it room by room

Start with the major purchases that furnish either your living room or your kitchen. TV, desktop computer, the mixed-medium landscape that hangs over the mantle. Fridge, stove, dishwasher, the outrageously expensive espresso machine. For appliances and devices, capture serial plates with close-up photos and record make, model, purchase date, and price; a narrated video walkthrough per room helps ensure nothing is missed (III).

Make special note of valuables

While they may not be as obviously expensive as a sound system or leather couch, you likely own collectibles, antiques, and jewelry. This is the category in which you may discover you need to up your coverage. These categories often have special limits in standard policies—jewelry theft coverage is commonly capped around $1,500 unless you add a rider or separate valuables policy—so flag them for appraisal and possible scheduling (Travelers, III).

Move from big to small

Once you’ve made a sweep of all the big-ticket items, move on to the small stuff. The clothing, kitchen gadgets, and miscellaneous equipment that populate closets and drawers. For the most part, these sundries don’t call for the same individualized record-keeping. Pull hidden items into view and take representative snapshots of the group. Provide detail in terms of number: two complete tool sets, eight winter coats, one camping tent, one record player, etc.; a simple worksheet like IRS Publication 584 can help keep counts and categories consistent.

Store your home inventory somewhere safe

If you’re going digital, your home inventory should be accessible on any device through cloud storage. It should also be easily exportable — able to generate PDFs to send to your email, to your insurance agent, or to an external drive. In short, it’s vital that the list is stored somewhere other than just on your phone or computer. A single device is vulnerable to all the same risks as expensive coats or collectible action figures. Keep redundant copies (cloud plus an offline backup), and secure them with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (Ready.gov, CISA).

If you’re going hard copy, the inventory document should be stored outside of your home at a trusted residence, with your lawyer, or in a safe deposit box at a bank. Consider keeping a dated duplicate in an evacuation “go bag” (Ready.gov).

The Best Home Inventory Apps

Home inventory apps provide a structured way to record and document your possessions with photos, receipts, and serial numbers. Since 2020, differences have centered on subscription tiers, cross-device cloud sync, QR/barcode labels for boxes, and robust CSV/PDF exports recommended by insurers (NAIC, Sortly, HomeZada).

While free options carry a lot of appeal, many popular home inventory apps now use subscription pricing to unlock advanced features such as multi-device sync, bulk import/export, and label workflows. Free tiers typically cap item counts or omit exports; verify current pricing and limits on vendor sites (Under My Roof, Everspruce).

Broadly, higher-tier plans add storage and personalization. If you are pretty sure that something straightforward will meet your needs (i.e., you only have one property to inventory), stick with a cheap or free tier and test the workflow, especially exports and backups. The NAIC Home Inventory app offers a no-cost baseline; you can also try consumer options like Itemtopia and see which you find most intuitive to use. The overall project will benefit from early exploration.

Home Inventory FAQ

When should you not make a claim?

You shouldn’t make a claim if your personal property loss is relatively small and/or if you’ve had multiple recent claims. Prior loss history is shared with insurers via C.L.U.E. reports for up to seven years and can lead to higher premiums, loss of “claims-free” discounts, or even nonrenewal in tighter markets—so reserve “excess” claims for meaningful losses you can’t reasonably absorb (NAIC).

What if your home inventory adds up to greater value than your coverage limits?

This is a great discovery to make before filing a claim. While most people arbitrarily choose their coverage limits based on what will get them the cheapest premium, those who conduct a home inventory are in a position to accurately protect themselves. Use your inventory to right-size your personal property (Coverage C) limit and confirm whether your policy pays replacement cost or actual cash value. Remember that “inflation guard” can raise overall limits over time, but fixed special sublimits (like jewelry) typically do not rise automatically—so schedule high-value items or add a valuables endorsement as needed (NAIC, III). Which leads us to…

What items do most homeowners insurance policies not fully cover?

Inventorying your home is the perfect opportunity to identify valuables that may be subject to special limits under your policy. Commonly affected categories include jewelry, watches and furs; firearms; silverware/goldware; cash; and securities—often with relatively low caps unless specifically endorsed (Travelers). The most common line item here is jewelry.

Most base homeowners policies cap theft coverage for jewelry at around $1,500 total — an insufficient sum for many — unless you add a rider/schedule or separate valuables policy (III, Allstate). Jewelry is delicate enough to be easily destroyed and small enough to be easily stolen. If you have your grandmother’s antique diamonds, a watch from your wedding day, or just a sizable trove of your own sparkles, consider scheduling important pieces; premiums commonly run about 1–2% of the item’s value per year, with broader protection and often no deductible depending on the insurer (III).

Can you get tax relief on personal property losses?

There are limitations to every homeowners and renters insurance policy. The good news: For federal taxes, personal casualty and theft losses are generally deductible only if the loss is attributable to a federally declared disaster (or to the extent of any personal casualty gains); otherwise, no deduction is allowed through 2025 under current law. But before you start itemizing your deductions, know that your eligibility for tax relief hinges on a few qualifications and proper documentation (IRS Topic 515, Publication 547).

• You need to file an insurance claim in a timely fashion when coverage applies; you can’t deduct amounts you could have recovered but didn’t claim (IRS Publication 547).
• You can’t get tax relief on losses reimbursed by your insurance company.
• Each separate casualty or theft event is reduced by $100 when computing the deductible loss (IRS Topic 515).
• For 2018–2025, you can deduct personal casualty and theft losses only if attributable to a federally declared disaster (or to the extent of personal casualty gains), and then only to the extent they exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income; use Form 4684 to claim the loss.