Home Inventory with Diane Hamilton

In this episode of Decluttering 55 Plus, host Michelle Passoff discusses the concept of 'next level clutter' and introduces the Under My Roof app, designed to help individuals organize their home inventory and important documents. The conversation emphasizes the importance of maintaining a home inventory for insurance purposes, estate planning, and overall organization. Diane Hamilton, co-founder of the app, explains how it can save time and money by keeping track of home maintenance, warranties, and valuable items. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to take charge of their clutter and utilize the resources available to them.

Takeaways

• Next level clutter refers to complex areas of life that need organization.
• The Under My Roof app helps users manage home inventory and important documents.
• Maintaining a home inventory can save time and money in emergencies.
• Organizing items by room can simplify the inventory process.
• Documenting valuable items is crucial for insurance purposes.
• The app allows users to track maintenance and warranties easily.
• Creating a home inventory is a step-by-step process that takes time.
• Using technology can enhance the organization of personal belongings.
• Planning for estate management is essential as we age.
• Taking action on decluttering can lead to a more fulfilling life.

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Transcript

Michelle 0:33

Welcome to all of you viewers out there and your listeners here at Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff. This is the place to come to hear all news and information about aging in the most powerful way that we can. We address next level clutter in our conversations on the show. What is that, you might ask? Well, conventional clutter is a mixed up jumbled mess of too many papers, too many clothes, and other stuff. Most of us know it well. Next level clutter is a newer concept. Next level clutter are areas of life on the road ahead that can be confounding and confronting. Things we're just not quite sure about. So what do we do? We sweep them under the carpet and put them off another day or forever. Out of sight, out of mind is always signal for clutter. And in this case, it's next level clutter. The good news is here we will address this rather than shy away from it. Here we invite experts, authors, authorities, and geeks to help us sort things out, find new resources, get in action, and get things done. This is the clutter-free lifestyle we call next level clutter cleaning. In one week, we may discuss health, fitness, and eating as we age. Another week we may discuss digital decluttering. Preparing a memoir so that generations coming up behind us know where they come from is another topic. Examining social relationships is important and deciding where to live and what to do next in retirement is on the agenda, as is financial and estate planning, and even deciding on final arrangements. If there's a topic that we don't discuss here and you want to talk about it, send us a note and we'll do our best to address your concerns. And by all means, while you're at it, let us know about your successes. A quick visit to www.decluttering55plus.com will take you to the Let's Connect button so we can be in touch. For now, let's get to today's topic keeping a home inventory and more. Diane Hamilton is the co-founder and managing partner of a company that creates apps that are useful in everyday life. One of her editor's choice award-winning apps is called Under My Roof. Rather than give you a long explanation about what it is, let's spend this episode finding out all about it and how you can use the app to centralize a lot of important documents. Even if you don't use the Under My Roof app, this episode will shine a light on how organizing these elements of your life and store them somewhere, someplace, will make a difference in your life. Welcome, Diane. How are you? I'm great. Hi. It's nice to have you out. We're talking to you from Virginia, is it? It is Virginia, Richmond. Okay. We go all around the country. It doesn't matter anymore because we have all this technology to help us out. Can you give us a short overview of Under My Roof and how it's important to us to consolidate the information that you store there?

Diane 3:26

Yeah, absolutely. It's really an app for organizing your home and helping you keep track of anything and everything home and stuff related. It goes beyond a list of your stuff with maintenance tracking, insurance analysis, household supply usage, warranty expiration. All of these details are neatly organized for you in the app. And really our goal with the app has always been to spend less time on our stuff and more time on what's most important.

Michelle 4:04

That's the irony. If you put time on your stuff, you have to spend less time on your stuff. So was kind of the irony of it. But you do have to make time to organize all those things. I want to focus in on home inventory. Actually, let me step back for a minute. Organizing all this stuff, your home inventory, your maintenance, your home documents, any renovations you have. Who is this used by? Why is this used? And why is it important to keep it in order, able to get your hands on it in an instant? Why is all of that important?

Diane 4:37

You know, it's really about saving time and money. These are things that we have to do on a regular basis. We have to keep track of maintenance. We have to keep our appliances up to date, or they fail, or we end up spending extra money because we didn't maintain them properly. It's all about taking care of what you have, spending less time trying to find the information when you need it. If you have it right there on your phone where you can get to it, you're saving yourself time and money, helping those around you as well. If you're organized and have everything up to date for inheritance, for estate planning, all of that information is useful.

Michelle 5:19

If anything, so many incidences of weather incidences or emergency incidents like fires or hurricanes, typhoons or tornadoes, you know, if anything happens to your house and you have a place where you can get your hands on what was in that home for insurance purposes, that's important to have all of this information. My husband and I had an estate sale company for about 15 years. Right. If somebody would come to me and give me a document that had a list of all the items in the house, what it cost for those items, receipts, the original prices of that, it would be so much easier to not overlook something that might be a collectible that's expensive. Right, right. Family heirlooms. So there's that reason if you have an estate sale or estate planning, or if you want to bequeath those items to somebody. That's all listed in your app, right?

Diane 6:15

Absolutely, absolutely. Ways to track errors. And you can do this while you're, you know, while you're adding items to your inventory. You can go ahead and tag it. We're at that age where we're starting to think about later in life situations and having that all planned out, tagging something I want my son to have or why it's so special, or, you know, pictures of it, of that important information.

Michelle 6:41

Yeah, something would not be high v in financial value. It might not be a collectible of any kind, but it may have historical value to the family. Like I know I've been in houses where something was hand-carved by the granddad, and he had handed that down to his son and his grandson. And that may have a story behind it and a reason why somebody may want to keep it, or if they let it go, they could even have a picture of it with its history. So that stays in the family in that way. Let's start with home inventory. What is a home inventory and where do you even begin to create one? Keeping in mind that a home inventory will come in useful. If you lose everything, you'll know what the contents were in the house. You'll have that on an app. Before we do that, I want to make a point to the audience. And that is what we're talking about today under my roof app is for Apple-based devices. Your laptops, your iPads, your iPhone, and they all integrate. If you don't have an Apple-based device, you can get apps elsewhere that will be for Android applications. You don't use an application, you can use paper and pen on a filing cabinet to file all of these things. But the important thing is that you consolidate this information. Just to keep in mind, we're talking about Under My Roof, which is an Apple-based device, but if the concepts we're talking about can be transported elsewhere. So, Diane, what a home inventory is and where do you even begin to keep it? What's included in a home inventory?

Diane 8:15

Home inventory starts out for insurance purposes, right? You want to know what you have, what your belongings are worth, how much insurance you need to make sure you're properly insured. So the most important part is starting with your larger, more expensive items and having the value, documenting what you paid for it under my roof that Kathy likes that for you, how much insurance you need. Um, do you have too much jewelry? Insurance has a lot of limits, caps on certain types of items. So is your jewelry underinsured? That is something that our app does and something you want to look for when you do a home inventory. That's how much it can help you.

Michelle 8:58

Recommends going room to room and say, okay, this is the furniture, this is the curtains, this is the artwork, these are the young knickknacks, and go room to room and put that into your inventory.

Diane 9:12

You know, it's not something that's going to get done in one shot. Start with the bigger items in each room, the things that are more valuable, and take a photo and add the name, and that's it. You can come back and fill in the other details like receipts and any documents you might have for it, serial numbers, that kind of stuff. But just get started.

Michelle 9:33

Serial numbers for appliances is always important. I'm always digging around for a serial number. Usually is at the back of a appliance on the floor where you can't screw it. So having that at your fingertips in an app is really a general.

Diane 9:48

Absolutely. If you have to get a warranty work done, you're gonna need a serial number, right? And you're gonna need to know that that warranty is expired or how to get in touch with the warranty people so you can get somebody out to help you with it. So, you know, there's some really simple uses of the application where it's helpful, and some really big ones like insurance. When you have that proof of ownership and proof of condition of an item, you're gonna have a better chance of getting a fair playing process. And it's going to be faster because you have all that information. You don't have to go back and look at that. You have the photos, you have the details, you have the list.

Michelle 10:28

There's a brand new feature you're coming out on the app, which will make it even easier for people to record all of this stuff. Can you say something about that? Yes.

Diane 10:37

Yeah, we are super excited. We released it actually yesterday. So um it's using Apple Intelligence, and um you can bring up your camera and the app and walk around a room, say an item's name, the app will take a picture, add the item, and categorize it for you. And then you go to the next item. You just keep speaking name after name. You can get done in minutes, get a room done in minutes.

Michelle 11:04

That's an incentive to use an app rather than your own self. Now, if you want to keep warranties, because I know I just had a filter on a refrigerator go out and I did have in my file the package, the filter came in, so I knew which one to replace it with. That's really handy. That, you know, when I went to the store and I showed them the container, the one package for it, they were like, wow, nobody comes in with that and says that. But if you have that all on the app, that's easy to get your hands on.

Diane 11:33

Absolutely, and we do. Um, household supplies actually came from Anita in our own house. I got tired of not having the right air filters around to change for the HVAC. And so we added a supplies tracking feature. And I have a picture of the supply. I have all the details. I have where we purchased them, and I know exactly which um vent needs what size, and I know if I need to buy more because we have alerts.

Michelle 12:04

Yeah, you there's nothing like being startled by a red light that comes on an appliance that says you got to go get something, and then you have to stop run out to the store, pick it up, and you don't know which now. In terms of booklets like warranty manuals, can you just go get a link from a website and drag and drop that into your app? How do you handle keeping track of all those documents?

Diane 12:26

Yeah, yeah. Any of the documents, um, you can put a link in so you can link out to the uh user guide or the manual. Um, but also what's even more helpful is you can download that and add it right into under my roof. So um wherever you are, if you need instructions or if you need um to look something up, you have it right there and you don't have to have internet access to go find it and link to it. So it's all right there.

Michelle 12:55

Because I knew this interview was coming up. I said, Oh, you know, how long has it been since we had our air conditioner serviced? And how about the gas? Before I had this interview, I had my uh gas and air conditioner all maintenance. So it's good to keep things up because if something does break down with your clients, that's the first thing they're gonna ask if you've kept it maintained. So not only will this app help you with your home inventory, it will help you to keep track of maintenance, renovations, say something about packing and moving because a lot of people who are listening and viewing here today may be making a change in location from the north to the south or from home to another. How does this app help you in moving and packing?

Diane 13:40

So, again, a need from something in our own home after we move three times in a year, um, is hacking and unpacking. Um, where is everything? What's in this box I have? You know, I have all these boxes. Where did I pack that coffee maker that I need to open first when I get to the meeting?

Michelle 14:03

We got the box where the snotches or the box where the coffee is. Right.

Diane 14:09

Right. Right. It really helps. Um knowing what you have, again, knowing what is moving before you move, we helped my mother downsize. We went through her house and documented everything and we labeled things um in the app, what to keep, what to sell, what to pack. And then when we packed, we knew exactly where everything was in the boxes. We knew that the boxes got to the smaller house. Um, we knew where they could go. And we could scan the barcode that we put on the box and bring up a list of the items in it during the move. So just, you know, again, saving time, saving money, and making sure you have the documentation should something happen during the move.

Michelle 14:54

Yeah, great. So you can use this app if you need to go with a paper and pen around the house and make notations room by room. Yes, have a metal filing cabinet stuck away somewhere where you have these documents, consolidating all the documents for your home inventory and your manuals and your maintenance and information about what supplies you need, organizing your packing and moving. It's really a great thing to do. So I recommend that people go to www.undermyroof.app and see what they have to offer. If this is in a format that works for you, how much is it going to cost somebody to subscribe to this service?

Diane 15:35

So it is free to give it a try on with a 10-item limit, but it's $34.99 a year.

Michelle 15:43

So if you're $34.99 a year, you can save yourself a headache. And if this is not an app that is compatible with your device, then find one that is and get yourself. But this is just a beginning of a conversation that helped you consolidate all these materials so that you save time and money and you're prepared in case of an emergency and it's good for your state planning. So, what could be better than to spend a little time to save a lot of time and a lot of money? So I want to thank you, Diane, for coming on the show today. If you visit again, www.undermyroof.app, have a look around, see if it's for you. And if anything in the world of decluttering, get in action, get started, and get things done. Yes. Please support this podcast by liking, following, subscribing to us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, wherever. And if you sign up on our website at www.decluttering55plus.com, just click on the let's connect button and we'll be sure to send you news you can use when we have it. At Decluttering55 Plus, we're of the belief that if you set your sights on a goal, you messer up the courage to get started, gather up your resource to get things done, your life will come alive. And so get out there and get things done. And Christmas is coming. Our Christmas is gone, birthdays are coming, all kinds of celebrations are coming. And maybe you don't need an occasion to pick up a copy of Decluttering 55 Plus Wisdoms to Create a Legacy, not a mess. It's a spiral book that sits on a desk or dresser top and flip it to any one of 29 illustrated messages to remind you of all the things that you can do to make a difference in your life and you being happy makes everybody happy. So get out there and remember to have a clutter free day. Thanks for being with us.