Guide

Home Inventory Before Hurricane Season

The time to list what you own is before a storm has a name. Hurricane season starts in June, and September is National Preparedness Month — two fixed points in the year that make a good rhythm: make the list in spring, check it in September. This page gives you the one-weekend version, in a calm order.

Why before, in plain terms

After wind and water damage, an insurer will ask what was in the house, room by room: brand, model, serial number, when you bought it, what you paid, what it costs today, and proof you owned it — a receipt, a warranty paper, a statement line, or a photo of it in place. That is the industry field set, in line with guidance from the Insurance Information Institute and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, checked October 2026. Rebuilding that list from memory, in a damaged house, is the hard way. Claims guides commonly put it at 30 to 50 percent for how much people underestimate their belongings from memory alone. A list made on a quiet weekend does the remembering for you.

The Insurance Information Institute puts it this way: an up-to-date inventory helps you "get your insurance claim settled faster, verify losses for your income tax return and help purchase the correct amount of insurance."

The one-weekend version

1. Saturday morning — the sweep. Walk the house in a set order: living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, home office, dining room, laundry. In each room, take a wide timestamped photo, one photo of each wall and corner, then closer photos of larger items in place.
2. Saturday afternoon — drawers, closets, and plates. Open every drawer, closet, and cabinet and photograph inside. Photograph serial plates on appliances, screens, computers, and larger tools instead of copying numbers by hand.
3. Sunday morning — the outbuildings. Garage bay by bay, attic, shed, and any storage unit: tools, bikes, sports gear, stored furniture, and holiday goods.
4. Sunday afternoon — the valuable and the paper. Jewelry, watches, instruments, and collections, each photographed, with any appraisal papers photographed beside them. Then fill in the short fields for the larger items: purchase date, price, and replacement cost today, from receipts and statements where you have them.

Our free home inventory template gives you the room order and the prompt list for each room, and the InventoryByHand app walks you through the same sweep on your phone, with a photographed-room checklist so you can see which rooms are done.

The off-site copy is the whole point

An inventory that stays only inside the house it lists can be lost with the house. The copy that matters lives somewhere else.

1. Export the finished list as one file — the list plus every photo.
2. Keep copies in places outside the home: in your own email, in cloud storage you control, or on a drive kept with family at another address.
3. If you keep a paper copy, keep that copy outside the home too, with the same family member or in a workplace drawer.
4. On your phone, install the app to your Home Screen rather than keeping it in a browser tab, and export after each work session.

Photograph your documents too

While you are photographing the house, photograph the papers you would need in the first week after a storm: your insurance policy papers and declarations page, appraisal papers, warranties for large items, and receipts for recent large purchases. Keep those photos with the inventory file, in the same off-site places. After a storm, phone lines and offices are busy; having your policy number and your agent's number in your own files saves hours.

Keep the rhythm

1. Make the full list once, in spring, before the season starts in June.
2. Add larger purchases as you buy them — a photo, the receipt, and four short fields, at the moment the item comes home.
3. In September, Preparedness Month, do a short check: open the file, confirm the photos are there, export a fresh copy, and add anything new.
4. Read your policy's personal-property section once, so you know about any special limits for jewelry or collectibles before a storm tests them.

None of this predicts a storm, and none of it changes what your policy covers — your policy decides that. It simply means that if you ever have to list what you owned, the list already exists, with photos, in a place the storm cannot reach.