Hurricane prep: the 60-minute home documentation checklist
General information, not insurance advice. Your policy language controls.
Water, shutters and evacuation plans are covered by every hurricane checklist. The step most families skip costs them the most: proving what they owned. After a storm, your payout is limited not by your coverage, but by what you can document. Here's the one-hour version, in priority order — do as much as the forecast allows.
Minute 0–10: the walkthrough video
- Walk every room with your phone camera recording. Narrate as you go — "living room, Samsung 65-inch, bought 2024".
- Open closets, drawers, the garage, the attic. Sweep slowly across shelves.
- This one video is your safety net for everything the detailed inventory misses.
Minute 10–40: the high-value pass
- Photograph each item worth roughly $300+ individually: electronics, appliances, tools, jewelry, instruments, bikes.
- Shoot the serial plate on electronics and appliances — it's the difference between "a TV" and a specific, payable item.
- Snap receipts you still have. No receipt? A photo of the item with its brand visible still beats memory.
Minute 40–50: the paper shelf
- Photograph your insurance policy's declarations page — you'll need policy numbers when calls get hard.
- Photograph IDs, titles and anything you'd hate to re-issue while displaced.
Minute 50–60: get it OFF the property
- Everything you just captured must survive the same storm as the house. Export a backup to iCloud Drive or Google Drive, or email the walkthrough video to yourself.
- Tell one person outside the storm zone where it is.
If the storm hits
Your inventory becomes the backbone of the claim: contents lists, proof of ownership, pre-loss condition. Photograph damage before any cleanup, keep every receipt for hotels and essentials — our claim diary guide starts there.
Room-by-room photos, serials, receipts, totals — exported as one PDF. On your phone, $19.99 once.
FAQ
Why document my home BEFORE a hurricane?
After a loss, your insurer pays for what you can prove existed. A dated photo inventory made before the storm is the strongest proof there is — and takes about an hour. Reconstructing a house from memory after a loss takes weeks and always misses items.
What if the storm destroys my phone?
Export a backup off the device before landfall: a photo inventory or app backup saved to iCloud Drive, Google Drive or emailed to yourself survives anything that happens to the phone or the house.
Do I need serial numbers?
For electronics, appliances, tools and anything over a few hundred dollars — yes. Adjusters can question that a TV existed; a photo of its serial plate ends the question. It's ten extra seconds per item.