While there are a number of ways to prepare a property for a winter storm, some households forget that their personal possessions should all be accounted for prior to the first snowfall. This entails creating a thorough inventory of all your belongings.

If there is a devastating storm in the near future, and you don’t have an itemized list of all your possessions, you could run into some serious roadblocks during the insurance claims process.

Get started sooner, rather than later

The longer you put off creating an inventory of your belongings, the more you put your livelihood at risk. Although creating an inventory of everything in your house may seem daunting and time consuming, once you have it, this list will come in handy for years to come.

However, you don’t have to get this all done in one sitting. Instead, spread the task out over a period of time. Meanwhile, if a storm hits in the middle of the process, and you only have a portion of your list completed, it’s better than nothing.

Concentrate on expensive items

When you finally set aside time to make an inventory, it can be difficult to decide where to start. A good starting point in on big ticket items, such as jewelry and electronics. The value of some of these items – especially jewelry – can increase over time. So make sure you have an insurance policy large enough to cover them.

Once you  move on to electronics, make sure to write down serial codes of major items. This unique set of digits can often be found on the back and bottoms of gadgets.

Get your camera ready

Although writing out a list of your possessions is recommended, taking pictures can be very helpful. This will provide more concrete proof that you owned certain items and will make the claims process much smoother. If it’s possible, try to take picture of items accompanied by a person in your households. This was you can provide definite proof that you had a certain item in your possession.

Go digital  

Creating an itemized list of all your possessions by hand may seem like the best way to complete this task, but making it into a digital copy could provide added security. This way you can create numerous copies and store them in different locations, such as a safety deposit box, fireproof box or the resident of a trusted friend or family member.