How to Document Home Contents Before a Hurricane

Storm-Ready Sam's step-by-step guide to documenting your Florida home's contents before hurricane season, so claims go faster if disaster strikes.

TL;DR:** Before June 1, walk every room with your phone, film everything, and back it up somewhere that isn't your house. This one habit, repeated every hurricane season, is the single biggest thing that speeds up a contents claim after wind or flood damage. What you need You don't need fancy software. You need: A smartphone with a full charge and cleared storage A cloud storage account (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, whatever you already use) Your closets, drawers, garage, and attic actually opened up Original receipts or bank/credit card statements for big-ticket items, if you can find them Serial numbers for electronics, tools, and appliances 45 to 90 minutes, uninterrupted That's it. The goal isn't a museum catalog. It's proof of what you owned and roughly what condition it was in, so an adjuster isn't relying on your memory three weeks after a storm. A few practical notes before you start: clear at least 10 to 15 gigabytes of storage before you begin, because a thorough walkthrough of a three-bedroom home will generate 20 to 40 minutes of video footage and dozens of still photos. If you run out of space mid-walk and have to stop and delete files, you'll lose momentum and almost certainly skip rooms. Plug in a portable charger if your battery drops below 50 percent. The last thing you want is your phone dying while you're narrating the contents of your garage shelving. On receipts: don't let the absence of paper receipts stop you from doing this at all. Most major purchases from the last five to seven years show up in your email inbox as order confirmations from Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, or your appliance dealer. Search your email for terms like "order confirmation," "receipt," or "invoice" and forward those emails to a dedicated folder before you start…