Do you have one of these?

A blog I follow talked abut doing a home inventory. How many of us know exactly what is in our house?

The blog, ‘Home storage solutions’, talks about inventorying everything from cutlery and crockery, to linen, to curtains, to carpets. The blogger suggests taking photographs or videos of our inventory and recording serial numbers of things like dishwashers, tumble dryers, cameras and TV’s.

When I read this article I knew I wasn’t going to follow all of the suggestions, I mean, I know how many beds we own and do you really need to know how many tablecloths you have?

This weekend tragedy struck an acquaintance of ours and their house burnt down. Now, I know people want to know what took the fire department so long? From experience, South Africans motorists who move out of the way of a siren, even for a very large red noisy fire truck, are few and far between. Then, there is the fact that we just don’t have enough fire trucks! Then, there is the fact that something like a third of those that we have are inoperable. We also heard about the Soweto community who stoned a fire fighter and then set the truck on fire. So,NO, the fire truck did not get there on time.

This got me thinking. Maybe taking a full inventory of your household contents may not be such a bad idea, after all! Having photographic proof of what you lost might also not be a bad thing as long as you don’t lose the inventory list in the fire.

We need to be realistic here. This is South Africa and we live in a country which sometimes feels like the Crime Capitol of the World. The inventory is good for when your laptop, TV, DVD player and other valuables are “permanently borrowed”, because obviously if you own one you can afford to replace it! NOT.

I have been shopping around for new insurance and one of the questions asked is, ‘what is the value of the contents of your house’? I honestly don’t know, do you?

So, I have had a rethink and I do believe that we should have an inventory list of our contents but I don’t think it needs to be how many duvet covers we own. If you own a bed, assume you have 2 or 3 sets of linen. Count your big ticket items like, computers and electronics and list your appliances. Unless you are going to insure your carpet specifically, I am not sure that is altogether necessary to list this. I also think if you take a video walk-through of your house with some narration, you don’t need photo’s of each individual item.

Among the many things, being a full time working mother has to do everyday, a home inventory just got added to the list!

Happy counting, everyone! Let me know how it goes. Did you have an accurate count in your head or did you find more stuff and need to adjust your insurance cover?