Keep a Home Inventory So Insurance Claims Go Faster

After a fire, flood, or burglary, the hardest part of an insurance claim is often not the damage itself but proving what you owned before it happened. Walk through your home once with your phone camera, open every drawer and closet, and film everything — this single video becomes your evidence if you ever need to file a claim. Store the video somewhere outside your home, like cloud storage or an email to yourself, so it survives even if your home does not.

Update the recording once a year or after any major purchase, and keep receipts for expensive items alongside it. Insurers pay out faster and with less friction when you can show what you had, rather than trying to reconstruct a list from memory under stress.