After a fire, it’s too late. Easy video inventory makes the next steps manageable.

After you experience a fire and you need to provide an itemized list for the claim, it’s too late. Instead, take the time to make a short video and prevent future headaches. Why is this coming up now? I recently had a close friend go through something no one should ever have to experience. On New Year’s Eve, they were celebrating with sparklers. The kind of innocent, joyful tradition so many of us share. When the sparklers burned out, they tossed them in the garbage and went inside. They didn’t realize the metal sticks were still hot, so hot in fact that they started a fire. It didn’t take long. What started as a small fire quickly became something devastating, engulfing the garage and a large part of the house. It also destroyed both cars. A simple mistake turned their lives completely upside down.

Watching them go through that process reminded me that when the unexpected happens, you have insurance, but that doesn’t necessarily make the process easy. Unless, of course, you planned. The fire itself was traumatic and scary, obviously. What catches most people off guard is what comes after, specifically, the exhausting, emotionally draining process of trying to remember everything they had lost. When you’re already overwhelmed and grieving, sitting down and trying to reconstruct a mental inventory of every appliance, piece of furniture, article of clothing, tool, and keepsake you owned is genuinely challenging. And if you can’t remember it, you often can’t claim it.

That experience reminded me about protecting my own family (even for someone who has been in insurance for decades, it’s easy to forget), and I want to share the single most practical thing we recommend to our clients and friends: record a video inventory of your home, and do it at least once a year.

I know what you’re thinking: that sounds tedious, and you’ll get around to it eventually. Many people think the same thing, this won’t happen to me. But here’s the truth: it takes maybe thirty minutes, you only need your phone, and it could save you an enormous amount of heartache and money if something ever goes wrong. A house fire, a flood, a break-in these things happen to real people, and your insurance company is going to ask you what you had.

So here’s how I do it, and how I’d encourage you to do it too.

Start at your front door and just walk through your home like you’re giving a tour to someone who has never been there. Talk out loud as you go. Describe what you see: the furniture, the electronics, the artwork on the walls. Open the kitchen cabinets and pan slowly across the shelves. Show your appliances, your dishes, and your small appliances on the counter; even your spice cupboard could contain hundreds of dollars’ worth of spices and ingredients, and they add up quickly. It doesn’t have to be cinematic. It just has to be thorough.

Move into the living room, the bedrooms, the bathrooms. Open closets and let the camera take in what’s there: clothing, shoes, linens, whatever you’ve tucked away on those shelves. Pull open dresser drawers, too. People forget about the contents of their dressers all the time, but those drawers are often full of things with real value, sentimental and financial.

Don’t stop when you get to the back door. Walk out to the garage and open it up. Show your tools, your lawn equipment, your bikes, your sports gear, your storage shelves. If you have a shed in the backyard, open that up too and walk through it. Seasonal items, outdoor furniture, and power equipment, all of it counts, and all of it can be claimed if you have documentation.

And don’t forget the spaces you don’t visit often. Your attic, your loft, your basement storage area. Those are exactly the places where we stash things we forget about holiday decorations, old electronics, luggage, heirlooms, sporting goods from a phase you went through five years ago. Again, these are the easy things to forget until you need them at Thanksgiving or if you decide to learn guitar again.

For anything that feels especially valuable, jewelry, collectibles, musical instruments, firearms, fine art, antiques, slow down and spend a little extra time. Get close-up shots, read serial numbers aloud if you can, and describe the item in detail. These are the things that can be hardest to document after the fact and the most important to have on record. Also, remember that anything we just listed in the valuables category has sub-limits (meaning caps on what the insurance company will pay unless you make changes) on your homeowners policy. Make sure you work with your agent to add coverage for those items.

When you’re done, email that video to yourself. That way, it won’t be lost in the same event that damages your home. Then set a reminder to do it again next year. Your home changes you buy things, you’re given things, you upgrade things. An annual walkthrough keeps your record current.

My friend is rebuilding now, and things are slowly getting better. But they’ll be the first to tell you that the process would have been so much less painful with even a simple phone video to reference. A little bit of time on a quiet afternoon is a small price to pay for that kind of peace of mind.

Do it this weekend. You’ll be glad you did.