In the Flickr of an instant...

In the "Flickr" of an instant your home could go up in smoke and all of your belongings with it.  A terrible thought. But I've got an idea of how to use Flickr.com to make things a little easier afterwards when dealing with the insurance company.  Flickr.com, how is Flickr going to help?

Back in the day it used to be suggested that we take pictures or videos of our house and the contents.  So when we are dealing with the insurance company we can document what we had, and when we had it.  It was suggested to keep those pictures off-site in a safe deposit box.  Great idea.  But it is time for technology to help us even with insurance pictures.  After all who takes pictures with film anymore?

So walk around your house and take lots of pictures, take pictures of shelves, and drawers.  Detail is good here and you can never have to many pictures. Valuable items take each item individually, jewelry, coins, the 2000 CD's in your collection, and the like.  Take pictures of the serial numbers of electronics.  Detail, detail, and more detail, every room, every wall, every closet, every drawer from every angle.

Now upload those pictures to your Flickr account.  Make sure to tag those photo's as private.  You don't need to give anyone a "shopping list" including locations for your house.  I would advise still going a tad old school and burning these pictures to CD and giving them to the same person you would have given your paper pictures to.  Just a little insurance.  I hope that taking these pictures is a huge waste of your time and you never need them.  But it is better to be safe that sorry.