In the last Blog, I outlined a Room-by-room inventory of your household personal property. If you are still with me, you should now have a list for each room in your home and the general contents of property you have in each room. Now it is time to get down to the nitty-gritty and be specific.
It’s time to look at the lists for each room and start breaking things down a little bit. In any given room of the average home, there will be a mixture of personal property items. Many of these things will have a clear and decided value, but many items may be more difficult to specify. Do you know how may tee shirts your son owns, or how many pairs of shoes you have? Imagine yourself standing on your front lawn as the fire department pulls away leaving you and your family with nothing except the clothes on your backs.
It would take a little while to recover from a loss like this one, good record keeping will help make things run smoothly when you are working with your claim adjuster.
It isn’t important to write down every single shoe or pair of underwear you have, but you may want to document your family’s pattern and habits in the area of clothing. We are all different, and some of us buy more or less then others. I myself don’t like doing laundry everyday, so my children may have more underwear then another family might. When considering what it would take to have all of your possessions replaced a general idea about your clothing habits may help with a claim later.
If you are they kind of family who ‘stocks-up’ on things and you tend to buy 20 pair of socks for your son, then you don’t want your insurance policy to only cover seven pair of socks, you want them to cover the 20 pair lost in the covered claim. If you buy clothes a size or four too large for your growing child, you want to be indemnified for this advance shopping should those future clothes be destroyed in a house fire.
When you are working on your room-by-room household inventory, be sure to do a quick count on the number of clothing and other personal needs items your family is in the custom of having and make note of it on your room inventory. Under the section of clothing make notes, such as how many underwear, socks, slacks, shorts, dresses, coats, winter clothes, and any other clothing habits you have. Of course, these numbers are only general and these items will be replaced over time, the important part about this step is establishing your family habits in this area so that when you do have a loss you are not covered as if you are an “average family.”
The next Blog entry will continue to help you put your personal property household inventory together.
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Related Blogs:
- Household Inventory–Getting Started.
- Household Inventory–At Least Make A List.
- Is Your Personal Property Insured For Replacement Value?
- Insurance Appraisals
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