Personal property insurance is one part of a homeowner's insurance policy that you will want to pay very specific attention to, even though it is the part of the insurance you probably most likely hope you never have to file a claim for. The personal property part of insurance is designed to repair or replace items that are damaged while they are in or around your home. This can include something like paying to help replace a diamond ring that falls down a kitchen sink drain, or something as extensive as paying to replace everything you own if it is lost or damaged in a house fire. When you are looking you're your cheap homeowner insurance quotes, pay specific attention to your limits for your personal property effects. A good rule of thumb for determining how much your limits should be is to assume $10,000 worth of coverage for each adult or older teen in your family and $5,000 for each child. So your traditional nuclear family of 2 adults and 2 children would have a $30,000 policy until the children got older.
A personal property insurance claim is one that you file with your company if an item is damaged, lost, vandalized or destroyed in your home as a result of an accident or other non-deliberate incident. Wear and tear on items is not covered. The best way to handle your claim for any item(s) you wish to file a claim for is by having as much detail about the item as possible: its purchase date, purchase price, purchase location, and current purchase value. The absolute best way to keep, maintain, and prove this information for a claim is by keeping your receipt for the item handy and/or by taking a picture of it or keeping a spreadsheet of all of the items in your house.
Some people like to keep a video inventory of their home, which can easily be updated on a yearly basis, by just walking through your home with the camera rolling and naming every item you (the camera) sees, and information about it. This can be given to an insurance claims adjuster who will come out after a loss to investigate your claim. It will make it much easier for the adjuster to evaluate the condition of the item, its value, depreciate it, and arrange for payment of your claim in a timely manner. Too often people don't think about keeping these details handy, and when disaster strikes, they find themselves scrambling to remember everything they owned, what it was worth, when they purchased it, and where a replacement could be found today and at what cost. You can save yourself a lot of trouble and worry by keeping an inventory (offsite if possible), one way or the other - either through video, pictures, spreadsheet or just an ordinary pen and paper list, and being able to access it and provide it to your claims adjuster when you need to.