Making a List, Checking it Twice

After the fire, our insurance agent told us we needed to compile a list of everything we’d had in the house in order to be reimbursed for replacement costs. We were lucky to have purchased this type of insurance the previous year when we renewed our policy.  It was inexpensive to add, and we’d hardly given it a second thought. Now, if we could just provide the actual purchase price of these items and then somehow calculate the replacement cost, the insurance company would cut us a check.  So, the lifetime accumulations of two forty-year-old adults, plus the possessions of three children, ages fourteen, eleven, and five, had to be quantified and broken down and put on a spreadsheet. Everything—from socks and underwear to plates, cups, knives, tools, hats and coats, artwork, and odds and ends—from attic to garage in a four-bedroom house.