A record of what you own, made with the camera you already carry

Why this page exists

Almost every search on home inventories returns insurance company pages telling you that an inventory is a good idea. Almost none of them hand you a way to make one, which is an odd gap to have discovered yourself.

This is the missing half: a way to produce the document, free, on the phone in your hand, without handing photographs of the inside of your house to a third party.

What to photograph, in order

Go room by room and photograph wide first, then detail. The wide shot is what reconstructs the layout if you ever need to describe what was in a room; the detail shots are what identify individual items.

For each room

• One wide shot from the doorway, showing the room as a whole
• Furniture, with anything distinctive about it visible
• Anything you would struggle to describe in a sentence
• Window and door fittings if they are unusual

For each appliance and device

• The whole item
• The label or plate, close enough to read. This is the shot that matters most.
• The serial number if it is somewhere other than the label
• The model number

Full camera resolution is genuinely valuable here. A serial number is 8 or 9 characters, often engraved on a plate in a dim cupboard or under an appliance. At the reduced resolution a video stream gives you, that plate is unreadable, and an unreadable serial number is the same as no serial number.

Outside

• Sheds, garages, lofts, garden furniture
• Bicycles, tools with their cases
• Anything stored elsewhere that you own

Naming and storing the file

An inventory you cannot find is not an inventory. Name it for the property and the date it was taken, and store it somewhere you actually back up.

Name it

Street or area and month. inventory-elm-street-2026-10.pdf

Keep it off the phone only

Photographs taken on a phone are lost with the phone. Copy the PDF to somewhere with its own backup.

Tell your insurer it exists

Only you can decide whether a document you took is worth mentioning to them. We are not going to tell you it is.

Review it occasionally

After a big purchase or a move, add to it. A two-year-old inventory of a house that has changed is still better than nothing.

About rooms you photograph

A home inventory is a detailed picture of your own property, which is about as personal as a document gets. It shows your layout, your possessions and often where things are kept. That is a good reason to make it yourself and keep it yourself.

Everything here runs in your browser tab and is discarded when you close it. There is no account and no upload.

What this cannot do

Be clear about the limits, because "inventory" invites assumptions.

• It is not proof of ownership. It is a record you made.
• It does not appraise anything. Values are a matter for you and whoever you speak to about them.
• It does not tell you whether it satisfies any insurer's requirements. Ask them.
• It does not store your photographs. The PDF you download is the only copy.