Hack 98. Inventory Your Home

Your home is filled with your possessions, and most of them are valuable or priceless. Using your video camera, you can inventory your home quickly.

Your digital video camera doesn't have to be reserved for capturing family moments, such as your child's first steps, or for creating your own movies. It can also be used as a practical device for keeping people honest [Hack #93] or even recording an inventory of your home. Recording an inventory of your home is particularly useful before packing to move to a new home, or if you ever need to make an insurance claim.

This hack was inspired by Derrick Story's "Create a Home Inventory" in Digital Photography Hacks (O'Reilly).

Unless you're just starting out in life, you've probably already gathered a bunch of possessions. And more than likely, you couldn't remember every single item. Luckily, armed with a video camera and your voice, you can document everything for future reference.

To get started on creating a home inventory, use a new videotape and write the month and year on the label. Then, select a room to begin with and record its contents. If the item you are focusing on has a make, model, and/or serial number, try to zoom in on it. Figure 8-29 shows a television's make, model, and serial number, as recorded on a MiniDV tape.

Figure 8-29. About as detailed an inventory as you can get

Videotape records audio, in addition to video, so you can verbally annotate each item. So, if you happen to know when and where you purchased and item, as well as how much you paid, you can just speak that information. For example, while focusing on your television, you can simply speak "Uh, let's see, we bought the TV at Best Buy last Christmas…umm, it was on sale for $349."

Proceed from room to room, recording every possession you own. Also be sure to capture those priceless possessions, such as family photos, because those tapes provide a low-level of backup. Even though an image on a videotape could never replace the photos, children's artwork, and countless other items we all hold so dearly, being able to see those items (should they ever be lost) can provide some level of satisfaction.

Depending on the size of your home, or your organizational obsessions, you might want to record each room on a different tape. This can prove useful, because you can easily reinventory a room by simply recording onto the appropriate tape, as opposed to having to rerecord your entire home. Additionally, you won't have to concern yourself with which tape has the most recent version of a particular room.

When you have completed your home inventory, store the tape(s) in a safe deposit box. If you're really motivated, you can also transfer the tape to DVD [Hack #79] or put it on a web site [Hack #83] in order to have back-up copies.

To keep your inventory up-to-date, you should record your home at least once a year such as every January, right after the holidays.