Organize for an Emergency: 5 Tips To Get Your Home Insurance Buttoned Up!

In recognition of September’s Emergency Preparedness Month, I found a great article by Guru Sarah Welch of Buttoned Up that I wanted to share.

Homeowner’s insurance or renter’s insurance is a necessity; it covers you for unexpected occurrences ranging from robberies to fires.

However, when it comes to assessing whether or not you have adequate coverage, the devil is in the details. For example, did you know that the majority of these plans do not cover floods or earthquakes or that some cover fire damage but not wildfire damage? With more and more extreme cases of weather and natural disasters, it is more important than ever to review your coverage and be certain that you have the best level of protection you can get given your budget constraints.

Here are 5 tips for getting your home insurance organized.

1. Watch What You Claim

Did you know that if you keep making small claims over and over, you may exhaust your insurance funds more quickly than you anticipated or be dropped from the plan? It may also cause your premiums significantly increase, in which case paying for that roof repair out of your pocket may be smarter financially. Look carefully at your plan before you make a claim or talk to your agent to find out all of the nitty gritty details on small claims and their effect on your coverage.

Valuables.doc by Buttoned Up - available at www.TheSimplifiedHome.net

2. Take Inventory

Do you know exactly what is in your home? First of all, write down from memory everything of value in your living room from electronics to DVDs. Now take that list to the living room. Did you remember it all? Now imagine doing that for your entire home after a fire rips through your home. Everyone has valuables; they are so much more than just artwork or televisions. Think about your CD’s, iPods, clothing, outerwear, golf clubs, Corningware, picture frames.  They are all valuable and worth something. Go through your home and take an inventory of everything in your house room by room. Take photos, keep the proofs of purchase for anything in your home over $200, get appraisals done on all luxury items like jewelry, and keep it all in an easy to grab binder that you can take with you at a moment’s notice. The other reason this step is important is you may find that you are carrying insurance for $25,000 worth of goods in your home, but actually have close to $50,000 worth of items in the house. You can also hire an insurance appraiser to go through your home after you take inventory if you would like. At the bare minimum, however, having the inventory log of the valuables in your home will get you a lot more in reimbursement if the worst does occur.

3. Determine Exactly What IS Covered

Insurance packets and their corresponding websites are not written for the layperson. They can be highly confusing, full of legal mumbo-jumbo, and contain asterisked scenarios such as “If your home is damaged in a fire you are covered for X amount of dollars.”* The small print under the asterisk then clarifies along the lines of *Note: Unless you own a red car, a monkey, or have ever eaten at Dale’s Deli.” These papers can be overwhelming, so schedule an appointment with your agent and discuss the ins and outs of your current coverage. To make the conversation easier, bring your valuables binder to talk about your home inventory, and discuss events that aren’t covered by your current plan, like sewage, hurricane, flood, earthquake, etc.

4. Equip and Prepare

Owning Insurance is one piece of the puzzle, but you can also take insurance into your own hands with proper emergency planning and preparation. For example, if you live in an area that has frequent wildfires, you should clear the brush around your property on a regular basis.  You may also want to consider applying a coat or two of fire deterrent paint.  If you live in a hurricane prone area, do you have proper roofing reinforcements and windows installed? Even if you don’t live in an area with extreme weather, simply having an alarm system means fire departments will be quickly alerted of flames and police of burglaries. These safety defenses also have an added bonus: they can lower your insurance rates dramatically.

5. Have an Insurance Assessor on Deck:

Keep the contact information of a trusted insurance assessor who is not affiliated with your insurance provider in your valuables inventory log. If you ever need to file a claim, have that third party assess your damage immediately. Your insurance company is going to do the same and they will try to pay you back as little as possible. Cover your bases and fight back by having another professional document the claim and cost so you get what you rightfully deserve. Your home is your safe haven, your livelihood. You should do everything you can to protect those assets by planning ahead.

We love Buttoned Up products and carry a wide variety in The Simplified Home. Here are a couple that I recommend for organizing home records and paper so you have what you need at your fingertips in the event of an emergency.

Life.doc - The only complete system for organizing all of your critical information in one spot.

The Life.doc binder by Buttoned Up will guide you through the process of capturing your critical information so it’s ready when you need it. Give yourself and your family peace of mind.

Learn more about Life.doc

Receipt.catcher – your receipts buttoned up.

The perfect spot for all those pesky receipts.

When it’s time to pay the taxes, balance your checkbook or return an item, you’ll know where it find the receipts when you use the convenient and compact Receipt.Catcher.

It includes nine tabbed sections that make it easy to classify receipts now and find them again later.

Learn more about Receipt.catcher

Collision.kit – The ONLY kit that ensures you have everything you need to accurately capture the details surrounding any car accident.

If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you know how critical it is to remember and document the facts after the accident. But when you’re shaken and upset it’s easy to leave the scene without complete information. Collision.kit from Buttoned Up ensures you have everything you need to record the details of the incident.

Learn more about Collision.kit

Pocket.doc – The ONLY perfectly portable record book for your essential information.

The Pocket.doc provides simple to fill out forms that easily fit into a wallet, purse or backpack. So you have critical emergency, medical, and contact information when and where you need it. 

Learn more about Pocket.doc

Originally posted 2009-09-28 15:13:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

How to Set-up a System to Keep Important Life Documents in One Place

How many times have you torn apart your house trying to find an important document? Often times these documents contain important pieces of your life that need to be in easy access, especially in an emergency. For most people organizing the documents and items that make up our lives is not a priority until there is a crisis. Then most will search frantically for the needed information only to waste time and increase stress.  Take it from a Professional Organizer who has worked with hundreds of clients who put this uneccessary stress upon themselves because they haven’t been proactive to design a system or were not aware that there are ready-made products available that will solve these paper clutter issues. Before the next crisis, set up a system to keep all your important documents in one place.

Ahh … imagine the relief of immediately finding any piece of needed information in the exact location you expect it to be.  I searched and found a couple of great products/solutions that solve just this dillema for my clients. Each serve as a central repository for important life and family documents, designed to be kept in easy access.

LIFE.doc  is a ready-made binder by Buttoned Up to keep all of the critical information of your life together. Life.doc has eight tabbed sections designed to organize all of the pieces of information that are needed for most people to keep one’s personal life in control.

These eight sections that encompass the most critical areas of life are:

• family basics
• in sickness & in health
• insurance
• dollars & sense
• legal ease
• caregiver information
• home sweet home
• emergency plan

It also comes with an accompanying CD-ROM with interactive forms that work with Microsoft Word (PC or MAC) making it easy to complete forms digitally and save them to a computer.

This comprehensive and bright red sturdy binder composed of 120 pages of straightforward forms for easy access are a roadmap that make it painless to get organized.  Life.doc will give you and your family the peace of mind that whatever information that you may need will be easy to find. This is the way to make sure that your house stays in one piece the next time that you need to find a piece of your personal information.

The VALUABLES.doc is another way that you can keep the things that you need in your life in one place and inventoried. This is a complete kit that will make it easy for you to catalog and keep track of all of your belongings.

• Valuables.doc binder by Buttoned Up includes:
  Eight tabbed sections for you to record all of your valuables room-by-room
• Jewelry
• Collectibles
• Family/living room
• Kitchen
• Dining room
• Bedrooms
• Basement
• Other

So, if and when disaster may strike in your life, (remember Hurricane Katrina?) you will have the necessary documentation to recoup the loss of many of the valuable keepsakes in your life.

POCKET.doc

The Pocket.doc provides simple to fill out forms that easily fit into a wallet, purse or backpack. So you have critical emergency, medical, and contact information when and where you need it.

The Pocket.doc by Buttoned Up includes:
Three sections to ensure that you have your emergency plan, medical information and important phone numbers when you need it. What’s great about this little record book is that it is the size of a credit card and easily fits in wallets, backpacks, glove compartments and briefcases.

Perfect for busy families on the go.

Each of these products would make a practical gift for your loved ones.

Visit The Simplified Home to learn more and to purchase.

Originally posted 2009-10-22 16:18:22. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Organize Your Recipes

I found this great article from a fellow organizer on a topic I haven’t written about before – organizing recipes. I like Evie’s ideas, so I wanted to share them with you.

So, what do you do with all of these clippings, or perhaps you have recipes written out on scraps of paper you got from a friend or coworker sharing her favorite recipe? Here is my current system, and I must say, it is working really well for me. Maybe it will work for you too.

Get an accordion file folder and label each pocket into categories as you would your recipe box. Here is a suggested category list:

• Appetizers and Snacks
• Beef
• Beverages
• Breads & Muffins
• Cakes & Squares
• Cookies & Desserts
• Casseroles & Pasta
• Fish & Pork
• Misc. (Pickles, Sauces, Breakfasts, etc.)
• Poultry
• Salads & Vegetables
• Soups & Stews

Get a large recipe box for your cards. I found this two-drawer holder which is perfect. I use the top drawer only for “my” recipes and family recipes. Any that are in my mother’s handwriting have been laminated to protect them.

The lower drawer is for recipes I have made from TV shows, magazines, or from friends that are “keepers.”

This system works so well, that it doesn’t take long to find my recipe, it is only in one of three places:

• Recipe Cards
• Cookbooks
• Accordion Folder

If I had a larger home, I would love to designate a whole drawer with file folders to recipes, but since I have a small house, this system works really well. The accordion folder fits in the cupboard beside my cookbooks.

The system is: once I make a recipe from a cookbook or a magazine, and it is a “ten,” then I write it onto a recipe card. The cards are proven, tried and true.

Let me know what you use to organize your recipes. I am always looking for new systems and ways to improve.

Elvie Look is an Entrepreneur, Expert Organizer, Cook and Seamstress. She provides organizing solutions, tips, menus and recipes at http://www.elviesessentials.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elvie_Look

Originally posted 2011-03-19 12:07:24. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The Couponizer – Coupon Organizing System

The Couponizer® is a time and money saving organizing system for the shopper in the family. Invented by a busy mom, the kit includes all the tools necessary to make saving money easy. The Couponizer® System will not only help keep your coupons organized, but it will keep you motivated to shop for savings over and over again.

The Couponizer® System includes:

* The Couponizer® wire-bound 6 x 8 booklet
* Your Guide to Smart Savings book
* CoupStacker coupon sorting mat
* Shopping List pad (store in Couponizer)
* CoupTracker list pad for recording monthly savings and spending
* Scissors for cutting coupons
* Durable clear-plastic zippered bag for carrying and protecting your Couponizer

Having sold out multiple times on QVC, the Couponizer is the #1 best selling coupon organizer on the market.

LEARN MORE

Originally posted 2010-07-10 22:35:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Loc-a-Sok Sock Organizers

IMAGINE … never losing another sock or having to sort piles of socks again! With Sock-Locks you eliminate lost / orphan socks forever and save the time wasted sorting socks.

With Loc-A-Sok socks go from washer to dryer to dresser drawer all without sorting or losing socks.

Buy a different colored set (10 Sock Locks per pack) for every family member and easily keep each family member’s socks separated throughout the laundry process.

Sock-Locks work for all types of socks. Simply insert each sock, toes first through the grippers. The Loc-A-Sok is a one-step process designed to keep any socks pairedfrom your laundry basket, to the washer, the dryer and into the dresser drawer.

No need to remove the Loc-A-Soc until socks are ready to wear.

Made of durable plastic, each pack includes enough for 10 pairs of socks, or 20 pairs of thin socks. Choose from 4 fun colors:

• Hot Pink
• Blue
• Purple
• Lime Green

Order a different color for each family member.

As an Organizing Consultant, I recommend the Loc-A-Soks to anyone who wants to save time, eliminate ineffecient home tasks, and be more organized, especially busy moms like me.

Perfect gift for a busy mom, new mother, those with memory challenges, really anyone!

LEARN MORE

Originally posted 2010-07-10 23:00:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter