How do I keep a record of what I own?

An inventory is one of those tasks with a large payoff and no urgency, so it never happens. It matters for insurance claims, for moving, for probate and for warranty claims, and the basic version takes twenty minutes.

Safety

Step by step

1. Do the video version first.Walk through every room with your phone, opening wardrobes, drawers and cupboards, narrating what things are and roughly when they were bought. Twenty minutes for a whole house, and it is what an insurer actually finds useful.
2. Include the places you would forget.Loft, garage, shed, under the stairs, the airing cupboard, the car. These hold a surprising amount and are omitted from almost every inventory.
3. Film the contents of drawers and wardrobes.Clothing is consistently the largest underestimate in any contents claim, and the only convincing evidence is seeing it. Open every drawer.
4. Add a written list for high-value items.Anything above a few hundred pounds. Description, make, model, serial number, approximate purchase date and price. That is what a claim, a police report or a warranty needs.
5. Photograph serial numbers directly.Electronics, appliances, bicycles, tools. A close photograph of the plate is faster than transcribing and impossible to mistype.
6. Keep receipts and valuations with it.Photograph or scan them as you buy things. Jewellery valuations are often required to be recent — commonly within three to five years — for items specified on a policy.
7. Store it outside the house.Cloud storage, or a copy with a relative. An inventory on a laptop that was stolen with everything else is the failure mode this whole exercise exists to avoid.
8. Keep it reasonably private.A list of everything valuable you own and where it is kept is exactly what you would not want shared. Encrypted storage, and not a public album.
9. Note where things are as well as what they are.Useful for insurance, and more useful for moving and for anyone dealing with your affairs. It costs nothing to say which room while filming.
10. Register valuables where a scheme exists.Bicycles and some equipment can be registered on national databases, which helps recovery after theft and is usually free.
11. Update it annually.One walkthrough a year, overwriting the last. Ten minutes, and it keeps pace with what has actually changed.
12. Update it after anything significant.A new kitchen's worth of appliances, an engagement ring, a bicycle, a house move. Those are the moments the record materially changes.
13. Use it for the insurance calculation.The inventory is what makes working out a contents sum insured possible rather than a guess — and under-insuring reduces small claims as well as large ones.

Tips

• The video takes twenty minutes and covers most of the value of this exercise. If you do nothing else, do that.
• Narrate while filming rather than writing captions later. Saying 'that's the Bosch dishwasher, about three years old' takes a second and is worth a paragraph.
• Do it before a house move as well. It doubles as a check that everything arrived.

Common mistakes

• Storing the inventory only in the house — A fire or burglary takes the record with the contents. Cloud storage or a copy held elsewhere is the entire point.
• Listing only the obvious valuables — Clothing, kitchen contents and the loft are where the value quietly accumulates, and they are the categories most often missed at claim time.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask