Welcome! Our patios, gardens, and outdoor spaces are sanctuaries to most of us. If your home has an outdoor space (in other words, your home isn’t in an apartment or condo), more than likely you’ve spent a bit of time and money creating a space that is a source of relaxation, leisure, and fun providing not only recreation but a diversion, too. And in doing so, you’ve collected a myriad of different things related to the garden and outdoors. Here are nine checklists to help you in your home inventory project:
42 Outdoor Items in Your Patio, Garden and Outdoor Spaces
42 Things in Your She Shed
42 Outdoor Toys, Equipment, and Supplies
42 Grilling Accessories and Supplies for Outdoor Cooking
42 Garden Tools and Supplies for Home Yard Care
42 Types of Garden Décor in Your Yard
42 Common Trees in Your Yard
42 Common Flowers in Your Yard
42 Common Bushes and Shrubs in Your Garden
Notice that I’ve included three lists of 42 about trees, flowers, and bushes and shrubs. That’s because they are covered for fire (and a few other things) under a standard homeowner’s policy at a limit of 5% of your dwelling insurance. For example, if the dwelling portion of your home is insured for $200,000, the trees, shrubs, and other plants coverage for a fire loss is $10,000. However, the insurance policy will only pay a maximum of $500 per tree, shrub, and plant, so you need to list them separately to get the most value from this coverage.
I’ve linked to the standard HO3 sample policy from the Insurance Information Institute’s site so that you can read this for yourself as well as their article about what is covered by standard homeowners insurance. The trees, shrubs, and other plants section of coverage is located on page 6 of this form. The reason I’m bringing this to your attention is because when I asked our insurance adjuster on the day we met him at our destroyed home site, if trees, plants, and shrubs were covered, he told me no. But after reading the policy cover-to-cover I discovered he was incorrect.
So, if you own a home with a yard, don’t forget to complete an inventory of your trees, shrubs, and other plants!
Here’s a tip: click here for the best value – The Complete Book of Lists: Room-by-Room Checklists for Your Household Inventory Project, – $10.00 for all 75 lists!
This all-in-one book of 75 checklists not only includes the “garden and outdoors,” but also incorporates these other parts of your home:
- Main Areas
- Bedrooms and Bathrooms
- Kitchen
- Laundry, Cleaning, and Storage
- Bonus Areas and Extras
- Home Office
- Holiday
- Garage and Storage
Each of these sections includes several home inventory checklists to help you with your project. You’ll have the complete set of home inventory templates at your disposal in one book for easy reference.
Starting From Scratch
We lost our home in a massive wildfire in October 2007. Known as the Witch Fire or Witch Creek Fire, I wrote a series of blog posts about our experience many years ago and you can read it here: Any Way the Wind Blows.
Creating a home inventory list for our homeowner’s insurance claim took me 9 months working nights and weekends. Every night after work, I’d haul out my laptop and get started. And the majority of every weekend was devoted to this project because without submitting this list to our insurance carrier, we would not have been paid. At the request of my insurance carrier, I created our house inventory on an excel spreadsheet. By the time I was done, my excel workbook was 165 separate excel spreadsheets within one excel workbook!
Less than a year later, we were fortunate enough to move back to our property into our newly rebuilt home. And one day as I looked around at all the unfamiliar new things that furnished this new home, it occurred to me that maybe it would be a good idea if I started a new home inventory because we didn’t have much stuff. And, since we didn’t have much stuff at the time, I thought it would be easier to do (it’s not; it’s still a “project”!). So, compiling these lists of 42 started out as a personal whole-house inventory project of our new home.
Several years later, I started blogging and decided to share my personal progress on my own house inventory with my blog readers by creating what I call my “lists of 42.” These lists of 42 are lists of different things in and around a house for home inventory purposes grouped together to total 42 in each category. Why 42 and not 50, 75, or 100? I thought it would be clever to “brand” the “4 Two” in the name of my blog!
In addition to branding “42” because of “Toot Sweet 4 Two,” by limiting the lists to 42, it makes this massive project more manageable by separating it into smaller projects. So, as you work your way through your home inventory project room-by-room and space-by-space, use this home inventory template as a roadmap. By doing so you will master this project in less time.