Business Tip :: Insurance and Home Inventories

12 July 2016

I have been exploring home ownership and related subjects, including insurance, lately.  I am searching for a "final resting place" for my senior years.  I have moved too much in my life, been homeless too many times, and renting doesn't allow me to shelter my children when they need it.  I am praying to buy a small but decent house in the Eugene OR area so I can continue my business pursuits as long as possible.  Trying to figure out the minimum costs involved, I have been exploring a lot of information sites, including searches for insurance details for a home and a business.

I somehow found a link to www.iii.org over the weekend.  It is an organization website with tons of links to text and video information on different topics about insurance.  The full name of the organization is Insurance Information Institute (III).  I don't know who they represent, who they might be affiliated with, or any of their background details, I just followed a search link to their site.  If you need that information, you will need to explore their affiliations yourself.

I had also been looking at Home Inventory options online.  Several names came up in the search process for that topic, and it turned out that one of the names is associated with III --  www.KnowYourStuff.org.  I explored that website and decided to sign up and see how it worked.  So far, so good.

I was planning to create another Excel file to start listing my possession and figure out how much I have and maybe what I paid for it... so kind of record for when I decide about an insurance policy.  When I discovered there are free programs to access online, I thought that might be a good way to get it done.  I liked the Institute so much, I thought their inventory program might be the best place to start exploring.

So far I only had time to enter a bunch of categories for my records, and one item to see how it would look in a printout.  The categories for this home inventory program are "rooms" -- but I just made some of them into possession "rooms" like craft supplies and stamp collections.  I wasn't able to get the list of categories/rooms to print, but the one item I entered printed, so I will use that as a guide sheet and try to figure out a list of my rooms for this inventory record.

I have already shared my discovery of III and KnowYourStuff.org with one of my Etsy teams and my family group at Facebook, but I wanted to share to option here.  It seems like a wonderful way to keep track of my crafting supplies, their costs, what I have and what happens to it, how much I get if I sell it, etc.  I think I am going to use it to record all the crafts I make and sell just to have a record of them, too... especially my collectible collections.  I just don't know if I will start a separate file for those, or just a separate room in this one.

I hope to share this option more as I learn the process myself.  If you already use an online inventory program for your own records, share that below, in the comments section.  It will be great to find out what other crafters are doing with these issues.

Until next time,
Deb   <3