Household Uses for a Digital Camera

I.  A couple of days ago I wrote about fixing one of our digital cameras.  Once I discovered digital imagery there was no turning back.  Within days the camera was attached at the hip.  I'm serious that a digital camera is always within easy reach basically 24 hours a day, 7 days as week!  I quickly realized that a digital camera is so much more than a tool simply to take pictures of family, friends and events.  f you have been following any of my blogs you will know that five of the six usually have digital images included in each post.  These are images I have either taken or created myself.

It dawned on me shortly after getting my first digital camera that this could be an extremely useful tool to document the contents of our house.  This is an ideal way to prove household contents in the event a claim is ever needed.

To document household contents I use: digital camera, recordable discs, 2 memory sticks and a Sharpie. 

How to document household contents:  Set the camera to the best setting for what you are photographing along with date stamping.  Go from room to room snapping pictures of all views as stills.  Set to movie then go back and do a walk through on movie setting.  In each case make sure you get good views of all insurable items.  Upload your images and movie to your computer.  Save these files in a folder of your choice on your computer.  Burn both the images and movie to disc and to both memory sticks.  You now have 4 copies of the images and movie.  It is imperative that one disc and one memory stick be stored off site preferably in a safety deposit box.  Store the other memory stick in your home safe or in another safe location.  Keep the images on your computer as an additional back-up.  Make sure you do an update every 6 months.

In addition to simply documenting household contents, I use the digital camera for so much more.  When it comes to insurance purposes something like the condition of our juke box (1) is documented but so are things like my Dionne Quintruplets original newspaper clippings scrapbook (2) that could not be replaced.  I do a lot of textile projects so one of the easiest ways to show someone who is learning to knit is to send them a picture of what the pattern should look like (3). 

I do a lot of genealogy research.  Photocopying if available ranges anywhere from 25¢ to $1 per copy.  I have found that I can get very clear images from the digital camera from microfilm (4), books, newspapers and so much more.  The best thing is it takes me seconds to snap the picture saving me a lot of time in addition to the money savings.  Digital images are perfect for recording appliance label (5) and parts (6) details.  I routinely take pictures of small household repair problems (7) that need to be repaired.  I do like the colours in our family room so took a picture of both the border and paint (8) that is fairly close to the actual colours.  I also would like to match a set of cappuccino cups I got for Christmas (9).   Then I uploaded these images to the iPod Touch so I have it available when shopping so I have an instant comparison for colours and packaging.  This is easier than carrying around photos and fabric swatches.

Garden Gnome
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