Home inventory for insurance: a step-by-step guide

A home inventory for insurance is a documented list of your belongings — photos, descriptions, values, and receipts — stored somewhere that survives the disaster you're insuring against. The fastest way to build one is with an inventory app: photograph each room and item, let AI write the catalogue entries, attach values, and keep it in the cloud. An afternoon of work can be the difference between a smooth claim and months of arguing with an adjuster from memory.

Why insurers love (and reward) inventories

After a fire, burglary, or flood, the burden of proof sits with you. The standard claims question is brutal in its simplicity: what exactly did you lose, and what was it worth? Most people can't name a tenth of what's in their own living room from memory — try it — and underclaiming by thousands of euros is the norm, not the exception. A dated inventory flips the dynamic: instead of negotiating from recollection, you hand over evidence.

What to document, exactly

For each item that matters, capture:

• •A clear photo — the item itself, plus the label, serial number, or hallmark where relevant.
• •Brand, model, and description — "MacBook Pro 14" M3, space grey" beats "laptop" in every conversation you'll ever have with an adjuster.
• •Purchase date and price — approximate is fine; a receipt, bank statement, or order-confirmation email is better.
• •Current value — especially for items that appreciate (jewellery, instruments, collectibles) or hold value oddly (cameras, bikes).

Check your policy for special limits: many contents policies cap payouts per category (jewellery, art, cash) unless items are listed individually. Those caps are exactly where an itemised inventory earns its keep.

The room-by-room workflow

Pass 1: the high-value sweep (one hour)

Walk the house once and photograph only the expensive stuff: electronics, jewellery, watches, instruments, bikes, designer bags, art, tools. Get the serial-number shot for electronics. This pass alone covers the items insurers scrutinise hardest.

Pass 2: the wide shots (twenty minutes)

Stand in each doorway and photograph the whole room from two corners. Open the wardrobes, the kitchen cupboards, the bookshelf. These wide shots are your proof for the long tail — the two hundred ordinary things nobody itemises but everybody owns.

Pass 3: paperwork (as it surfaces)

Don't hunt every receipt up front — you'll stall. Attach proof of purchase opportunistically: search your email for the order confirmations of your five most expensive items, photograph warranty cards when you stumble on them, done.

Why an app beats a spreadsheet

Spreadsheets die of friction: typing every entry by hand is exactly why most inventories stop at row twelve. storay was built around the camera instead — snap photos of your stuff and AI turns them into a catalogued online inventory with names, descriptions, and values. Organise items into shelves by room ("living room", "storage unit", "jewellery") and track what the collection is worth. It's a PWA, so it lives on your phone — the device you're already holding when something new enters the house.

Three things matter specifically for insurance:

• •It's off-site by default. A cloud inventory survives the house fire that takes the laptop the spreadsheet lived on.
• •Everything stays private unless you choose otherwise. Public shelves are opt-in, per shelf. An insurance inventory can stay entirely yours.
• •You can hand it over. Storay Plus includes CSV export, so when the adjuster asks for a contents list, you send a file instead of a shoebox.

The free plan covers your 25 highest-value items — which, not coincidentally, is the part of the inventory that matters most in a claim. Plus (€9.99/month, coming soon) removes the cap and adds AI auto-fill from photos for full-house documentation.

Keep it alive (the part everyone skips)

An inventory from 2021 is better than nothing, but a current one is what settles claims fast. Two habits keep it honest: photograph big purchases the week they arrive, and do a ten-minute walkthrough every six months. If you sell or donate something, remove it — an inflated inventory helps no one, least of all your premium.

The bonus: an inventory pays for itself

Once everything you own is catalogued, two things happen. Moving house becomes trivially easier — you already have the packing list. And you'll spot the things you don't actually want anymore: in storay, selling them is flipping a shelf to public and sharing a link, whether that's a wardrobe you're thinning out or furniture before a move. But that's strictly optional — as a pure insurance record, storay does the job with the camera you already carry.