Welcome! This section of the Lists of 42 is short and sweet – three lists representing the main areas of your home. Here you will find the following individual home inventory templates:
42 Things in Your Foyer, Mudroom and Hall Closet
42 Things in Your Dining Room
42 Things in Your Living Room, Family Room, and/or Great Room
If you are working on your own home inventory project, whether as a proactive project to document your personal belongings or a reactive task for an insurance claim because of a catastrophic loss, these three rooms are a great place to start. But, if you are working on your own home inventory project, these three rooms are just the tip of the iceberg! Click here for the best value – The Complete Book of Lists: Room-by-Room Checklists for Your Household Inventory Projects.
This all-in-one book not only includes these three areas classified as the “main areas,” but also includes these other parts of your home:
- Bedrooms and Bathrooms
- Kitchen
- Laundry, Cleaning, and Storage
- Bonus Areas and Extras
- Home Office
- Holiday
- Garage and Storage
- Garden and Outdoors
You’ll have the complete set of home inventory templates at your disposal to get you started.
The Start to My Own House Inventory Journey
We lost our home during a wildfire in October 2007. Known as the Witch Fire, I wrote a series about our experience many years ago and you can read it here: Any Way the Wind Blows.
Working nights and weekends (we both had full-time jobs), it took me nine months to create a home inventory for our homeowner’s insurance claim. 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!
Once we moved back into our newly rebuilt home almost a year later, it occurred to me that maybe it would behoove me to start a new one 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. 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 space. Why 42 and not 50 or 100? I thought it would be cute 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 breaks a gigantic project down into manageable bites. By working your way through your home inventory room-by-room and space-by-space, using this home inventory template as a roadmap, you will master the project in less time.