What to put on each line
One item per line, written as name | date | price | category. The date takes either MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD; if you cannot remember the day, the first of the month is close enough for a total. The price is read as a number and the dollar sign and commas are optional, so $1,450 and 1450 are the same. The category is appliance, furniture, electronics or other, and the matching is loose enough that "fridge", "sofa" or "laptop" land in the right place. Leave it off and the item is filed as other, which is fine for a total but applies the wrong service life to a television.
Do not try to list everything. Twenty items covers most of the value in a typical household, and the tail is long and worth little individually. Clothing, kitchenware, books and tools are better handled as one line each with an estimated total — Clothing | 01/01/2020 | 3000 | other — than as two hundred lines you will never finish typing. Tabs work in place of the pipe character, so a two-column paste out of a spreadsheet comes in cleanly.
How the depreciated figure is worked out
Straight line. Each category has an assumed service life, value is written off evenly across it, and past the end of that life the item is held at a floor — ten percent of what it cost by default. A twelve-year appliance bought six years ago sits at half its purchase price. That is a model, not an appraisal, and it disagrees with the market in a specific and predictable direction.
| Item age | What straight line says | What the used market usually says |
|---|---|---|
| Under a year | Nearly full price | Sharply less — the first year is the steepest drop |
| Mid-life | Around half | Roughly comparable, often a little lower |
| Past its service life | The floor percentage | Anywhere from scrap to more than the floor if it is well kept |
Both the service lives and the floor are adjustable at the top of the page. The defaults are broad averages across a category and will be wrong for individual items — a chest freezer and a microwave are not on the same clock, and neither are a hardwood dresser and a flat-pack bookcase. If most of what you own is at one end of its category, move the setting.
Two moments when the list earns its keep
Before a move, a list turns a quote into something you can compare and gives you a way to notice what did not come off the truck. Damage and loss disputes with movers turn on evidence, and a list written afterwards is not evidence. Photograph the expensive items before they are wrapped, and mark anything already flagged for replacement review — an appliance at the end of its life is often not worth the cost of moving it.
Before renewing a policy, the total is what tells you whether the coverage limit still fits. Limits get set once and then sit there through a decade of buying furniture. The gap between what is listed here and what you have insured is the part you would be paying for yourself.
Actual cash value against replacement cost
The single most consequential thing about a personal property policy is which of those two it pays on, and the two figures at the bottom of the results bracket them. Actual cash value pays what the item was worth at the moment it was lost — depreciated, close to the middle figure here, and often startlingly small for a ten-year-old appliance. Replacement cost pays what it takes to buy an equivalent new one, which is nearer the total paid and moves with current prices rather than with age.
The difference on a whole household easily runs to five figures, and it is the difference between a claim that restores the room and one that pays for a fraction of it. It is stated on the declarations page. Read that first, then decide which of these totals your limit should be sized against — and treat every number on this page as a starting figure to discuss, not a valuation anyone else is bound by.
Questions people ask
Where do the default service lives come from?
They are broad averages, not a standard. Twelve years for major appliances, twelve for furniture, five for electronics and eight for everything else are middle-of-the-road figures that sit reasonably close to common trade guidance and manufacturer expectations. They are not tax depreciation schedules and not any insurer internal table. Within a category the spread is wide — a range and a microwave do not wear out on the same timetable — so treat them as adjustable and move them if what you own skews one way.
How should I enter something bought secondhand?
Two workable approaches, and the important thing is to use one of them throughout. Enter what you actually paid on the day you bought it, which is simple but starts the depreciation clock late and leaves the item looking worth more than it is. Or enter the year it was made as the purchase date and the price it cost new, which produces a figure that matches its actual age. The second is more accurate for old items; the first is easier and fine for a rough total. Mixing them within one list makes the total mean nothing.
Is the list saved anywhere?
No. Everything is worked out in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and a refresh clears the page. That is deliberate — a household inventory is exactly the kind of document that should not be sitting on someone else server. The copy box holds a plain text version to paste into a notes app or a cloud document, and pasting it back later and changing only the valuation date revalues the whole list. Keep it somewhere that would still exist if your home did not.
Can I use these numbers on an insurance claim?
No. They are a straight-line estimate from a model with adjustable assumptions, and they carry no weight with anyone. What does carry weight is the underlying record: item, purchase date, price, and a photograph. An adjuster works from evidence of what you owned and their own valuation basis, and a list you prepared in advance with dates and prices makes that process enormously faster than reconstructing it from memory after a loss. Build the list for the record it creates, not for the total it prints.