How do I organise household information so someone else could find it?

Most households have one person who knows where everything is. That works until they are ill, away, or gone, at which point somebody else has to reconstruct it from letters. An afternoon prevents that.

Safety

Step by step

1. Build a where-things-are document, not a details one.Pointers rather than secrets: which bank, which insurer, where the policy lives, where the passwords are kept. That makes it far safer to store and just as useful.
2. List every recurring supplier.Energy, water, broadband, mobile, insurance, council tax or rates, TV licence, subscriptions. Provider, account number and the renewal date. This is the section that gets used most.
3. Record the property practicalities.Where the stopcock, consumer unit, gas shut-off and meters are. Boiler make and last service, alarm codes, which key opens what. Someone dealing with an emergency in your absence needs exactly this.
4. Note the financial structure without the credentials.Which banks, which accounts are used for what, which direct debits come from where, and where any mortgage or loan sits. Not account passwords.
5. Use a password manager with emergency access.Most offer a delegated or emergency access feature where a named person can request access after a delay. That is the correct answer to passwords, and it removes the need to write any down.
6. Record where the documents physically are.Deeds, will, birth and marriage certificates, passports, insurance policies, guarantees. The location matters as much as the existence.
7. List the people to contact.Solicitor, accountant, financial adviser, employer, the neighbour with a key, the vet. With numbers. Reconstructing this list under pressure is slow.
8. Include the things only you know.The tap that has to be turned a certain way, the fuse that trips, the bin day, the neighbour who takes parcels. Household knowledge that exists nowhere else.
9. Say where the will is and who the executor is.One line. It is the piece of information most often missing at the point it is needed, and it does not require discussing the contents.
10. Keep it in two places.One physical copy somewhere secure at home, one encrypted digital copy. A document only on a laptop is unavailable in exactly the circumstances it exists for.
11. Tell one other person it exists.And where. A perfect household file nobody knows about achieves nothing. That conversation is the actual deliverable.
12. Date it and review it annually.Providers change, accounts close, people move. An out-of-date file is worse than none because it sends someone in the wrong direction. Ten minutes a year.

Tips

• Do this before a holiday rather than as a morbid exercise. Someone needs to be able to deal with a leak while you are away, and the file gets written for a practical reason.
• Keep it to two sides of paper. A twenty-page document does not get updated and does not get read.
• If you share a household, do it together — the point is that neither person is the single holder.

Common mistakes

• Writing passwords into the document — It turns a useful reference into a serious risk if it is found. Use a password manager's emergency access feature instead and point at it.
• Making it and telling nobody — The whole purpose is that someone else can find and use it. An unknown file is the same as no file.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask