In this era of more frequent and intense extreme weather events, more nomadic lives that send us across state lines and national boundaries, and often an abundance of ‘stuff,’ we have more risk and more at risk than ever before.  

Just think, back in 1994 after the L.A. earthquake, there were more than 19,000 insurance claims filed. That was 30 years ago when the population of L.A. was approximately 3.5 million. The population of L.A. has since boomed to 12.7 million. Imagine the volume of claims from this year’s catastrophic wildfires alone! 

Home inventories offer you a baseline level of peace of mind and practicality. If you have your home and its contents well documented, you’ll be able to proceed more rapidly through the claims process and likely recover more on your claims than without. 

That means if you do nothing else, take a video of each room in your house, and store the video in a private virtual space (and back it up to a second location, too). Now in a worst-case scenario, you have something to go from to prove what you owned to your insurance company.  

Better yet, subscribe to a home inventory app. Modern home inventory apps can take you much further than a baseline inventory and serve different home and life management needs and priorities. Today we’ll introduce a few home inventory apps to illuminate the variety available and offer some insights from professionals who are using these apps to support you through decluttering, downsizing, and moving. 

Before we dive in, for those who are less familiar with Artifcts, you may wonder, how does Artifcts compare with a home inventory app?  

What we built at Artifcts is wholly different from a home inventory app. We are not worried about every spoon, bed sheet, oven, or lamp. Nor are we worried about home maintenance. At Artifcts, we built a warm and engaging experience for the curated items of your life so that you can keep the memories, even if the ‘stuff’ is lost to time, relocation, or mother nature. You can Artifct the value, provenance, and documentation, too, behind your most valuable possessions to support your insurance claims or estate planning processes. And at Artifcts, we’ve made it easy to share and enjoy with friends and family as well as advisors (e.g., insurance, estate planning, financial advisors). 

Examples of Home Inventory Apps

We checked out dozens of home inventory apps designed for private homes to understand the variety of core offerings as well as bells and whistles each offers. For simplicity, we chose four to feature here not as a promotion, but to illustrate why a home inventory app that is best for you may not be the app that is best for me. 

Listed in alphabetical order. 

FairSplit. This home inventory system allows users to manually and/or with AI-support create a personal home inventory. But the ultimate distinguishing feature, in our opinion, is the upgrade available to then use the system’s proprietary options to divide the assets in a home among beneficiaries: Divide Things, Not Families®.  Web-based only.

HomeZada. This home management system integrates inventory, maintenance schedules, financial oversight, and management of remodel budgets into a single platform. It simplifies property management, empowering homeowners to maximize their home’s value and functionality. AI-enabled to provide critical supporting details. App- and web-based.

NAIC Home Inventory App. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) offers this free inventory app for you to create your inventory manually as well as through scanning barcodes for improved accuracy. The NAIC also features disaster preparedness and claims filing advice. App-based only.

Pinventory. This home inventory app offers a unique and extensive collection of reports customized to particular types of objects. Use the system DIY style or hire a Pinventory specialist to create your detailed home inventory. You can also leverage its integration with MaxSold to sell select items. Web-based with a limited-functionality companion app.

How Should You Choose the Right App for You?

Before you select the inventory app for you, here's some advice from our experience: 

• • • Try it out free on the device, or combination of devices, you intend to use it from (e.g., mobile, tablet, desktop computer). If you think you are going to use it mostly on your phone, test it out on the phone, not on your laptop. Not all apps work like the Artifcts app, where we have nearly identical feature sets on the mobile app and website and automatically synchronize your changes on mobile with the desktop version. 
    • Read the reviews and pay attention to changes over time in customer support, cost, and features you care about most. 
    • Pay attention to media storage (i.e., your photos and videos). What is the storage limit? And will that work for you and the items you plan to inventory? What is the cost for additional storage? 
    • Understand the security and privacy of information you upload to the app and how you will be able to share private information with others of your choosing.
    • Learn how you can retrieve (i.e., download) your inventory data if you want to provide a summary report to an advisor or loved one, or if you decide the app is not for you and you want to take your information with you. 
    • Then decide for yourself, “Does this app, at its core, do what I need?” Ignore the bells and whistles. Are your basic needs met?

What the Pros Have to Say About Home Inventory Apps & Working with Clients

We interviewed several experts in move management, moving, and home cleanouts to get their takes on all things personal home inventories. We were curious how often creating a home inventory is a part of the services they provide to their clients and why they choose the apps they do to get the job done.  

MOVE MANAGERS 

Remarkably, at most, the move managers we spoke with create inventories as a service for 20 to 25% of their clients.  

“If our client is preparing to deal with beneficiaries in court for probate or is going through a divorce, that’s when we need an inventory app so we can be more thorough,” said Marty Stevens-Heebner, Founder & CEO of Clear Home Solutions and author of "How to Move Your Parents (and still be on speaking terms). “The reality is, most other clients are satisfied with simple photos and videos that they then save to their personal cloud account.” 

A problem that arises is that for many of us homeowners and renters, even if we do a home inventory, we’re human, and we forget to update it. It is used for some transitory need and never revisited. But the golden rule from an estate planning perspective is to set a reminder to review and update your inventory and the estate plan it’s tied to at least every two years.  

From an insurance perspective, the more often you update your home inventory, the better. Make a habit of updating your inventory with life changes (e.g., marriage, death, inheritance, new baby, move) as well as with any major purchases. Each of those appliances, large home furnishings, collectibles, and the like add up quickly when it comes to replacing them if lost to fire, flood, or otherwise. 

MOVING COMPANIES

Moving and the use of inventory apps are a whole different story. We spoke with Ryan Hegarty, Director of Residential Sales for Olympia Moving, a member company of Wheaton World Wide Moving. Hegarty described inventories as integral to his company's move operations. Every item that comes into company-managed storage, is placed on a truck for inter-state delivery, or is heading overseas is managed through an inventory system. 

“But inventories are also part of our sales and planning process. We schedule virtual calls with potential clients and guide them through creating an app-based video inventory using Yembo,” explained Hegarty.

Using AI, the inventory app allows the Olympia Moving team to provide customers with immediate estimates, too.

“It also provides us with critical information to estimate box counts, dimensions of entry ways, and where we’ll need a ramp. It means a better, more efficient workflow on move day and reduction in surprises for us and the homes we move.” 

HOME CLEANOUTS

Matt Paxton, Founder & CEO of Clutter Cleaner, offered a different view on inventory apps and the home cleanout process. 

“We have to do a full inventory of a home during an estate clean out. We often have multiple family members that live in different states that simply aren’t aware of all of the items in a home. Some of the states that our Clutter Cleaner teams work in, it’s state law to provide a full inventory of assets sold and dispersed during the probate process,” explained Paxton.  

He’s also found that it’s easier to divide the items when a family is aware of what items are in the home.  

“If the family already has a home inventory, it could save them money during the cleanout process. If they don’t, we typically use Fairsplit to help a family get a full inventory before estate settlement. No matter where you are in the process, a home inventory really helps you understand what you have and what you are willing to disperse, sell, and or donate.” 

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We hope this ARTIcles story will inspire you to take a first and then a second step to inventorying your home for greater peace of mind. And if you discover an app or process that works best for you, share with us! We’d love to learn from you: Editor@Artifcts.com.

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Have you ever stopped to wonder, “What is going to happen to all my ‘stuff’ one day when I’m gone?” We’re going to hedge our bets and say probably not. Given that only 32% of us even have a will or estate plan, the finer details of all that ‘stuff’—cherished mementos, valuable collections, travel keepsakes, old photos and more—are often overlooked. But that’s the crux of the problem. Our ‘stuff’ becomes the proverbial elephant in the room, and someone, somewhere is going to have to deal with it one day.  

Our co-founder Heather discovered this the hard way when her mother passed away unexpectedly seven years ago. Heather had all her ‘stuff,’ but what she didn’t have, or even know, was what on Earth would her mother have wanted to happen with all that ‘stuff.’ Donate? Sell? Keep in the family? Bequeath? Her mother was the only one with the answers, and sadly, her mother was no longer there. 

For those of you who are new to Artifcts, and may not know our founding story, this is what led Heather to partner with Ellen to create the platform that you see today.  

We all have stories, we all have ‘stuff,’ and chances are our ‘stuff’ is going to outlive us one day. We should learn from the best of the best - museums! Just look at your favorite museum—it likely has more ‘stuff’ than you can imagine, safely enclosed in glass display cases, with descriptions, dates, and the like to help tell the story and give it context. 

Today’s ARTIcles story though is not about death, dying, or even museums. No, it’s about our ‘stuff,’ the items we love—the things that make us smile, the mementos we keep reminding ourselves of good times—and how to use Artifcts in your estate planning to ensure that all our ‘stuff’ doesn’t end up in an unwanted pile somewhere, or worse yet, in a landfill. Bad for our legacies, and bad for the environment.   

Estate Planning of Things 

Years back we published an ARTIcles story titled, The Estate Planning of Things. The premise was simple—use Artifcts to populate your tangible assets memorandum (that’s a fancy way of saying a list-of-stuff-who-gets-it-next-and-why).  

Over the years we’ve gotten questions from estate planners, executors, and families on how to do just that. We get it! Estate planning and thinking about our own mortality is a stressful, no-fun way to spend a weekend. But avoiding a protracted probate process and lessening the grief and cost to your loved ones may be just the motivation you need. 

Let’s dive into the nitty gritty details of how to use Artifcts to ensure you and your family, friends, or executor have a roadmap of what happens next to all your ‘stuff.’ Why you may ask? Because we’ve yet to meet an Artifcts member who has said, “It’s okay, all of my ‘stuff’ can go to a landfill when I’m gone.” Our ‘stuff’ and stories matter.   

Five Easy Steps to Estate Planning with Artifcts 

1. 1. 1. Pick an item you want to Artifct. It sounds obvious, but sometimes that is the hardest part. You may choose something financially valuable or something that has a lot of “heat value.” There is no wrong way to start.  
      2. Add a short or long story or description, and any important details you want to include with the Artifct. If you get stuck, click the lightbulb icon in the Artifct form for ideas. And try to alsways include why this items is important or valuable to you?
      3. Attach documentation. This is especially important for financially valuable items. If you’re working with an attorney or an estate planner, they may specifically ask you to attach receipts, valuations, appraisal reports, and the like to document the provenance and current market value for gifting and tax purposes.  
      4. Fill out the “In the Future” field. This step is critical as it creates the roadmap for your family of what happens next for each item you Artifct. 
          
         Click the image to view our ArtiTips video about the 'In the future' field.
      5. Click save! Congratulations, you can now privately share your Artifct with your attorney or export it to your estate planner. You can easily export your entire Artifct collection, a single Artifct, or any combination of Artifcts. Some members even opt to send their estate planners their Artifct QR code to incorporate into their tangible asset memorandum. You can get your Artifcts collection QR code by visiting your "My Artifcts" page. It's available at top right, just below your personal banner.

Details to Consider When You Artifct for Estate Planning 

As the title of this ARTIcles story suggests, Artifcting is an art. And we’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs when it comes to Artifcts to support your future plans. Here are our top tips: 

Want to avoid conflict among your heirs? If you suspect sentimental or valuable items you own will become a source of conflict, provide your reasoning for why a certain item will go to one person and not the other down the road. Doing so may help assuage the concerns and sadness of those left behind.

Do not send your loved ones on a scavenger hunt looking for items you no longer own. That means using that "location" field in your Artifct if you do still own it and indicating "Too late, enjoy the memory" in the 'In the Future' field if you have parted with it already. And if you have parted with it, be sure to update your tangible assets memorandum, too!  

While you're at it, fill out your Legacy Contacts for your Artifcts account, because we think your Artifcts are valuable and in estate planning, you need to also account for your digital assets. At Artifcts, you can choose primary and secondary Legacy Contacts, ensuring the time and effort you put into creating your Artifcts are never for naught. Your Legacy Contact(s) will be able to access your Artifcts after you are gone (although they won’t be able to edit the details; your Artifcts, your voice!) 

Simply go to Account Settings: General >> Manage My Profile >> Security and Longevity and click “Preserve My Artifcts.” Your future heirs will thank you.  

Have additional tips when it comes to Artifcts and estate planning? We’d love to hear from you! You can reach us at editor@artifcts.com. 

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Estate planning on your mind? You might also be interested in these ARTIcles: 

Gift Your Loved Ones a Why

Your Future Family Heirlooms

Insurance & The Art of Artifcts

A Family History in Five Artifcts

© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Reading time: 4 minutes 

Paper clutter and digital clutter can transform minor nuisances to major problems when you have a critical need for access to your important life documents. Today we want to flag the evolution well underway to declutter and organize all of life’s essential information so can you find what you need, when you need it, via what’s commonly referred to as digital vaults. 

Bottomline: These modern tools can help you and your loved ones to get organized and be better prepared. 

How many email, banking, shopping, entertainment streaming, and even cloud storage sites are you using? Apps exist to help you keep track of paid memberships to ensure you remember to resubscribe or cancel, helping you keep an eye on costs and control the chaos. Check out this story from US News: Money for information on a few. 

And what about true life essentials, like the paper copies we keep of everything from warranties, tax filings, and receipts to insurance policies and mortgage documents. Sometimes we keep these because we aren’t certain where the digital version exists or if a paper copy is somehow legally required. We may even have digital duplicates floating around in our email accounts. 

Digital vaults can manage it all, your car title, mortgage information, passport and drivers license, and banking and investment details as well as life’s daily resources (memberships, online accounts, contact lists, and more) to be better prepared for everyday life, the aftermath of natural disasters, and deaths in the family. Vaults have a different scope than home inventory apps, the latter focusing on the tangible stuff. And vaults offer more features than file storage, like Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive, where you can nearly endlessly amass files without rhyme or reason.

The Early Days of Digital Vaults

Some of the first companies in this space emerged following the 2011 tsunami in Japan, others have steadily followed.  

At stake is everything we rely on to make our lives function. And when major calamities strike, we may lose access to important documents, including insurance policies, property deeds, and more, without which a return to any sort of normal is impaired and/or prolonged. A digital solution was needed to help people through these life altering events with less stress, cost, and loss. 

Why go digital? Because files in a cabinet or box are vulnerable. Period. Add to that the fact that more and more of our lives have gone digital, there’s no reason to create a paper trail for loss and misuse when robust and affordable digital options are now available to help us tackle it all securely. 

The Digital Vault Industry Today

The digital vault industry has emerged to not only securely store critical information but to also offer built-in planning tools. How’s that for efficient!  

Avoid getting distracted by bells and whistles, however. Review each vault’s listed features, and ask yourself: Does it meet my core needs? No one vault is exactly like another. Pick the one you’ll actually use and will work best as you work with financial services, insurance, estate planning and other professionals, too. At a minimum, as you review each vault consider: 

• • • Security of the system, how you will sign in and grant others access, and how any of your personal information is being used by AI tools to generate personalized recommendations. 
    • Export options if you terminate your subscription and want to take your assets back out. 
    • Adding new information, meaning is this a tedious manual endeavor or is there support from smart instant scanning and sorting (generally AI-assisted). 
    • Price for the trial period, annually, and lifetime plus any add-on features you “need.” If there is a free model, always try before you buy, and then upgrade if you like it and free is insufficient for your needs. 
    • Unique features. As we’ve said, no vault is exactly like the other and your needs are not identical to others’ either. Trustworthy Certified Experts™ offer customized 1:1 guidance whereas Motivity Care provides a suite of concierge care management services and GoodTrust is supporting estate planning. 
    • Ease of use, because beyond different features each offers, the vaults each look, feel, and organize your information a bit differently as is the ease with which you can securely share information with family and professionals. Don’t forget to test your vault out on the device you will use to get the work done, e.g. desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or phone.

Here are a few examples of digital vaults on our radar, each with an array of unique features, offerings, and specialties.

Artifct Here are a few examples of digital vaults on our radar, each with an array of unique features, offerings, and specialties.

(In alphabetical order; with company tagline.)

• • • Everplans: All the pieces of your world in one place. 
    • GoodTrust: Estate planning made easy, affordable, and secure.
    • Motivity Care: Redefining how you manage caregiving. 
    • Prisidio: Your digital vault. For life.™ 
    • Trustworthy: The Family Operating System®

You’ve Signed Up to a Digital Vault: Now What?

If you’ve taken the step to set up your data within a vault, be proactive to ensure your time and money are well spent. Here are a few tips to make the most of your digital vault from our personal experience: 

1. 1. 1. Block time to your calendar over the next few weeks to input your critical accounts, memberships etc.; if you have a filing cabinet or box, start by digitally migrating those contents. Email is another great source to migrate docs you’ve received. 
      2. Turn on any available options for reminders within your chosen vault so you keep information updated and fill any gaps you might leave;  
      3. Add an annual refresh date on your personal calendar; of course, if you have a major life event (birth, death, sell a company, etc.), or you move, you should also update your vault information; and, 
      4. Set alerts in your search engine of choice, such as Google Alerts, for announcements from your vault company about events, new or retired features, and policy and price changes in case you miss an email or alert from the vault.
      5. Send feedback to your digital vault of choice. It only makes the product better (for you and for all) for companies to receive feedback. Screenshots and videos are amazing bonuses to include in your email to the company. Don't forget to mention what type of device you are working from (e.g., smartphone, tablet, desktop), if applicable.

With a digital vault, you’ll be better prepared for yourself and your loved ones. We hope you find one that fits your needs!

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You may also be interested in these ARTIcles by Artifcts:

Emergency Go Bag: Don't Forget the Memories

Estate Planning & the Art of Artifcts

Insurance & the Art of Artifcts

© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When my daughter first started to read, she loved to sit and page through the Shel Silverstein books of poetry. I’d overhear her chirpy little voice melodically reciting the poems in her bedroom to her audience of stuffed animals. The books are aged but quality hardbound copies, gifts from my parents when I was young and bearing inscriptions such as “Merry Christmas, 1992.”  

As my daughter got a bit older, questions started to bubble up from the poems, like, “Why is there a curly string on that phone?” and “What is that v coming out of the top of that big tv?” 

Technology has changed dramatically since Silverstein penned these poems, opening up new topics of conversation across generations.

Technology change has also greatly complicated something else: Simply finding a photo.

I am in my 40s. I have lived through the transition from 35 mm film to digital cameras supported by memory cards to predominantly using my smartphone to take pictures. I don’t even have a camera purchased within the last decade! I should probably take a hint from Artifcts’ Tech Detox checklist to dispose of a few. But maybe not the first big 35mm I bought when I was leaving to study abroad in Sweden. It’s a bit sentimental to me.

I digress!

Fast forward to last weekend when I wanted to find a series of photos I took when my sister and I visited NYC in 2005 just after Thanksgiving. I turned to my husband and said, “What did we even take photos with in 2005? Did we have cameras on our phones then?” He shrugged and hazarded a guess that we were still in the memory card digital camera era.

I looked for over an hour through portable hard drives and photos in cloud storage to no avail. Making this search more complicated was the fact that for some reason, the dates on the photos in the folder viewer were all identical, like it took on the date that I transferred the photos to the hard drive.

What’s next for my photos?

My photo problem is growing worse by the day. I’m guessing yours is, too. Did you know that on average we take 20 photos a day? That’s 5.9 billion photos every day worldwide.

And that’s not even factoring the boxes, albums, and bins of photos that my parents will someday pass on to my siblings and me. I need to get my act together now before the deluge arrives.

My action plan looks something like this: 

• • • Corral all my photos—physical and digital—into one place and back them all up on a portable hard drive and in the cloud, because I do not want to lose anything.
    • For physical photos with no digital version, decide to (a) buy a scanner and digitize myself, (b) hire a professional photo manager to tackle this and so much more, (c) take the photos into a local shop or a mail away company to digitize, and/or (d) use the Photomyne app to scan the photos rapidly without even removing them from their album pages. Making this effort far easier could be technology like Mylio. It is designed to corral your photos into a single library and to make the next step easier too…
    • Sort my photos, at scale, which to me sounds incredibly daunting and unpleasant. This is where I hope that the metadata in at least the digital-native photos will expedite the process because it can reveal time, date, and place. Plus, even the tech built into the modern smartphone can sort by type of photo (yes, it knows how many selfies you’re taking) and provides facial recognition, too.

• • • For scanned photos, well, that’s another matter. There’s no metadata unless I presorted them and have at least an event name or year associated with them or the camera-imposed dates on them (but then, was my camera date and time accurate?).
    • Tag favorite pics that I want to write about, share with others, or otherwise bring back to life, maybe hang on a wall. You know, the joyful part of photos. Even last weekend while hunting for those NYC photos, I came across a beautiful photo of my friend’s mother who has since passed. I paused to text her the photo so I would not forget and so she’d have this sweet image to add to her own collection.

What about my NYC photos?

Hopeless.

For now, I have given up looking for the original, digital versions of my NYC photos. I pulled down the heavy cardboard box from the office closet, opened up the decaying photo album I knew contained print copies of the photos I was seeking, and took photos of the photos.

The entire inspiration for looking for this set of NYC photos was a pin that my daughter noticed on my sweater on a recent cold day here in Austin, Texas. She asked if it was new, and the answer to that question led me back in time to one of my favorite stories to tell people about a Thanksgiving nearly 20 years ago that throws me into fits of laughter even in the telling of it today.

Now, I can be sure my sister will never live down this memorable Thanksgiving and my daughter will know the story of the pin, a future heirloom. My story is Artifcted to stay.

Maybe you have a similar favorite story you tell about a family member to Artifct and share. Some stories are too good to allow them and the photos that add color to the telling to fade away!

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We love writing about photos and helping you capture the meaning behind them. Explore these ARTIcles for more!

© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The following story is based on a true story shared with us by a member of the Arti Community. We’ve altered some details to protect their privacy. We hope their experience helps you feel less alone in the tough choices you make as times change, your way of life changes, and who you live that life with changes, too.

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When my father passed away, my mother was truly on her own. But she was not physically or mentally healthy enough to live on her own. My parents had been married for 63 years. Solitude and independence were foreign to her. I know that in many families the open question in this scenario is, “Who will take care of Mom?” If that’s the story you are expecting, you can stop here. That is not our story.

For my family, when it came time to settle the estate, my siblings and I sat down together in our childhood living room and spoke very frankly. All in our 60s and 70s, we knew our own minds and we knew each other well enough to hash it out together fairly quickly.

My brother said he wanted the house. He had no desire to leave the local area, so taking over the family home was his top wish.

My sister wanted my mom. You read that right. Her one request was that Mom move in with her so she could take care of her and ensure she had constant familiarity and companionship. This suited Mom perfectly, and so she moved into my sister’s home where she spent the final 10 years of her life.

Are you now wondering what it was I wanted? One thing: a cabinet that had sat in our family’s living room for as long as I can remember and surely longer. It contained the most glorious accumulation of ‘stuff.’

As a child, I wanted nothing more than to open the doors and explore all the knickknacks inside. I’d ask my mom about everything, driving her crazy as she was trying to get on with other tasks around the house. To me, a burnt casserole in the oven was just fine if I got to hear the story of Grandma’s crystal bowl one more time. 

The Cabinet of Curiosity Lives On

This cabinet of curiosities now sits in my home, filled with some heirlooms from my mother and my grandparents too. But over the years it has taken on the personality, interests, and lives of me, my husband, our children, and our grandchildren. It’s filled with stories, stories we tell as often as we may. The reality is, we have so little time together with our family that I don’t think there will ever be enough time to share them all. 

When I use the dishes and glasses, I think of the relatives who owned them. For example, one of my dear mother-in-law’s beautiful wine glasses has a nick on the edge. When I wash and dry the glass, and feel the edge, and I remember how she dearly loved her family despite our flaws. 

We have a silver bowl awarded to my husband for outstanding geological research, always in need of a polish, and seldom out on display (shame on us!).

Buried among the crystal pieces you’ll find a decanter we bought in Prague in 2012. It’s leaded crystal, so we couldn’t actually store the port we'd drink in it. We needed to decant only what we intended to drink. And, with that level of practicality, can you really blame us for letting it fall into disuse?

We also have the baking dish that Grandpa Art used for his freshly caught fish. And two glasses that our wonderful Uncle Lawrence and his friend created as they practiced their glass etching skills. Oh, and the vases from our travels in China. I’ll stop there, because it truly is my cabinet of curiosities.

My hope for you all is that you will discover the joy that is Artifcts. There are stories I want shared with my immediate family only. Other stories are for my siblings, my church friends, and others. Artifcts offers me a safe place to record and share them. 

Artifcts has become a lovely addition to my day, sitting down to create a few Artifcts, reflecting on my life, sharing with loved ones, and feeling like I’ve done my bit to ensure my family’s history is passed on. I know one day I’ll leave behind a cabinet of curiosities and memories to cherish.

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We know that maybe your story is not about a cabinet. Maybe your story and the messy memories of lives lived are decorating your shelves, packed away in boxes, or adorning every square inch of your home.

Whatever it is you collect, whatever items you choose to hold onto, do yourself, your stories, and your loved ones a favor, and record what these things mean to you. You may be surprised by the fun you’ll have in the sharing and telling, too!

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Creating an Artifct is often a joyful experience, sometimes it is also cathartic, and for many Artifcting has become their preferred means of planning for their today and for their future. Insurance fits into that final category of Artifcts: preparedness. 

As you update your policies or renew in the new year, consider: Do you have enough insurance coverage for your valuables? Are you over insured? Do you have the documentation necessary to file a claim if mother nature, theft, or an accident forces your hand? Is an appraisal needed for a valuable item in your collection?

Ironically, in a 2020 poll from the Insurance Information Institute, fewer homeowners reported having a home inventory than a decade prior, despite increased familiarity with and options for digitization of photos, documents, and more as well as a proliferation of inventory apps for home goods and collections.

It’s human nature to avoid the negative, the improbable, and any issues that aren’t about today. But here at Artifcts, you’ll not only be able to create a record of items that are of greatest value to you, but in the process, you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy reliving and sharing your stories and passions with others, too. 

Artifcts to Support Insurance 

When you create Artifcts with insurance coverage in mind, there are a few best practices to guide you. 

• • • Photos and video. Take advantage of the five photos and/or videos you can add to each Artifct. Take a picture of the object as a whole, take another picture of a maker’s mark, if any, and then photograph the item from other angles. We also strongly encourage you to record and include a short video of the object, showing it from multiple angles. 

• • • Documentation. Take a moment to find the receipt, appraisal, certificate of authenticity, or, if nothing else, a credit card statement that can help validate the original market price paid and the authenticity of the item. Attach it to your Artifct. When you acquire new items of value or collectibles, we recommend you Artifct That on the spot, when everything you need is at hand. This is a habit that will serve you well! 

• • • Provenance. Where did it come from? Why do you have it? What does it mean to you? Even if you have only family lore of where an older item came from, record that in the “Description or story” of the Artifct.  

If you purchased it, describe where and when you were when you acquired the item and what makes it valuable to you. No, sentiment is not a qualifier in appraisal or replacement value, but it will be important to helping you get the right coverage and setting your own expectations for items you value.  

• • • Add optional details. In your Artifct, click to view the “Full Form” and include how old it is, when you acquired it, and the marketplace or artist it’s from to facilitate an appraisal and any future insurance claims. We also strongly encourage to add its current physical “location.” And tag the item, e.g., #insurance, to easily sort your Artifcts by items you have, or want to have, added to your policy.  

Determining the Value of Your Belongings 

If you’re not sure of the value of an item in your collection, but suspect it’s valuable and want expert insight, you can Artifct That and then click “What’s it worth?” to share the Artifct and its supporting documentation privately with Heritage Auctions. They will assign your Artifct to the appropriate expert to review.  

You will receive a notification automatically in a few weeks when the free valuation is ready. You’ll find the valuation report in the documentation section of your Artifct. With the information from the valuation in hand, you can decide what to do next.  

Here's an example: You inherited a clock from your grandfather. You love it because it reminds you of him, always positioned on the bookcase next to his favorite reading chair, and you know he brought it with him to the United States from his homeland, Japan. The free valuation from Heritage Auctions informs you that that clock, in that condition, from that maker, in today’s market would go for between $18,000 and $22,000.  

You may think to yourself, “I better get an appraisal and confirm that it’s covered by my insurance policy.” Or you may think, “I loved Grandpa, but that clock is not that valuable to me. I’m going to sell it and use that money for {whatever you like}.” 

Before you sell a family heirloom or anything you value, you should consider these tips from Lark Mason, an expert in Chinese art and antiquities and frequent host on Antiques Roadshow. Read now! 

Insurance: Fact or Fiction 

We’ll close out this focus on Artifcts for insurance by revisiting our popular “Fact or Fiction?” discussion we had last fall with Howard Insurance, a private insurance advisory and risk management firm, about how to protect your ‘stuff’ from the chaos and mayhem that is life.

We invite you to test your knowledge with our "Insurance: Fact or Fiction" quiz, and then see what the experts have to say. (Hint: Answers are below.) We hope each point will build your confidence to take the necessary steps to protect all you cherish! 

1. 1. 1. I need an appraisal to insure an item separate from my homeowner's policy.
      2. My homeowner's policy will pay to replace items even if my jewelry, antiques, silver or fine art has appreciated in value.
      3. All homeowners' policies are the same and include the coverage for everything in my home.
      4. Coverage for my personal trust is automatically included in my homeowner's policy.
      5. All homeowners' policies include coverage for mysterious disappearance.
      6. My personal property coverage is worldwide.
      7. Coverage for my personal property includes water damage, hurricanes and floods.
      8. There is no deductible for losses to my personal property.
      9. Filing a claim for my personal property will not impact my homeowner's premium.
      10. Mysterious disappearance coverage is included automatically on valuables policies. 

As the fact-fiction quiz reveals, picking the right policy or combination of policies is critical to protecting your ‘stuff,’ and worth a conversation with your agent. Watch the video replay with Howard Insurance for the full details behind each of these fact or fiction questions. 

Happy Artifcting!

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