How to Create a Home Inventory — The 2026 Guide

Why you need a home inventory

Most people can't name 100 items in their home. The average household contains an estimated 300,000 items. That gap — between what you own and what you can account for — is the reason home inventories exist.

Three situations where a home inventory pays for itself immediately:

• Insurance claims. After a fire, flood, or theft, your insurer will ask for a list of damaged property. Without an inventory, you're reconstructing from memory — and you will forget things. A documented inventory can increase claim payouts by 20–35%.
• Moving. Know what's coming with you, what needs special handling, and whether anything went missing during transit.
• Finding things. The most common use case and the most annoying daily friction. A searchable inventory tells you exactly which room, shelf, or drawer holds the thing you need.

Method 1: Spreadsheet (free, ~20+ hours)

The most accessible method. Create columns for item name, category, room, purchase date, value, and serial number. Walk room by room and enter everything manually.

Pros: Free, flexible, no learning curve. Google Sheets templates exist.

Cons: Time-consuming. For a 3-bedroom house, expect 20+ hours of data entry. Photos require separate management. Easy to abandon halfway through. Most spreadsheet inventories are never finished — and the ones that are finished are never updated.

Best for: People with fewer than 500 items who enjoy detailed record-keeping. Not practical for most households.

Method 2: Home inventory apps (free–$40/year, 10–20 hours)

Apps like Sortly, Encircle, and Nest Egg add structure: item photos, categories, room assignments, barcode scanning, and cloud backup. Most have mobile apps for in-room entry.

Pros: Better organization than spreadsheets. Photos attached to items. Some integrate with insurance providers. Exportable reports.

Cons: Still manual. You photograph each item individually, type descriptions, assign rooms. For 2,000 items, that's 2,000 photos and 2,000 entries. The UI makes it easier but doesn't reduce the fundamental effort.

Best for: Organized people willing to invest a weekend. Insurance-focused use cases where accuracy matters more than speed.

Method 3: Professional inventory services ($300–$1,000+)

Hire a professional inventory service. They come to your home with cameras and clipboards, document everything, and deliver a finished report.

Pros: Zero effort on your part. Professional documentation. Often accepted directly by insurers.

Cons: Expensive. One-time snapshot — no ongoing updates. Someone you don't know goes through your belongings.

Best for: High-value homes, pre-move documentation, insurance requirements for collections (art, jewelry, antiques).

Method 4: AI-powered walkthrough (new, ~5 min per room)

This is what we built PerifEye for. Instead of photographing individual items, you record a walkthrough video of each room. AI processes every frame, identifies objects, maps them to rooms, and builds a searchable inventory automatically.

How it works:

1. Walk through each room with your phone camera, panning slowly.
2. Upload. Computer vision identifies objects frame by frame.
3. A human operator verifies the AI output — catches edge cases the ML misses (mirrors, occlusions, misidentified items).
4. You get a searchable dashboard with location history and a repair tracking list that updates on every walkthrough.

Pros: Dramatically faster than any other method. Updates are as simple as recording a new walkthrough. Repairs and maintenance issues are flagged automatically.

Cons: New technology — early stage. Requires good lighting and steady footage for best results. Operator verification adds a processing delay (currently ~2 min per room).

Best for: Anyone who wants a home inventory but doesn't want to spend a weekend building it. Homeowners who want ongoing maintenance tracking alongside inventory.

Comparison table

What to include in your inventory

Whether you use a spreadsheet, an app, or PerifEye, cover these categories:

• Electronics (model numbers, serial numbers)
• Furniture (photos, purchase dates, condition)
• Appliances (make, model, purchase date, warranty info)
• Tools and equipment (brand, location)
• Clothing and accessories (high-value items only for most people)
• Collectibles, art, and jewelry (appraisal documents if available)
• Important documents (passports, deeds, insurance policies)

Keeping it updated

An inventory is only useful if it's current. The most common failure mode: spending a weekend building an inventory, then never updating it. Two years later, it's wrong — new purchases are missing, sold items are still listed, items have moved rooms.

This is the problem PerifEye was designed to solve. Because updating your inventory is as simple as walking through your home again, the friction to keeping it current is near zero. Each walkthrough refreshes the AI's understanding of what's where — and flags anything that changed.

Questions? Feedback? Email me at arnd@dexmind.ai or find me on Twitter.