Rural home: the Home Inventory

The Rural Romantic is all about living peacefully and fully. Part of peaceful living is peace of mind, and for me, that means knowing that I am prepared for things that could come my way.

Part of that is knowing what I have in case I need to file an insurance claim, and a great way to do this is to create a home inventory.

Making a home inventory can be easy and fun. Just follow these simple steps, and in no time at all you'll have a home inventory too!

1. Pick a room and make a video log or take lots of pictures of the items in the room. If it is your living room, for instance, you might take several photos of the TV and any multimedia equipment, game systems, DVDs or VHS (if you still have those), as well as some shots of the furniture. Don't forget your artwork or knick-knacks! Be sure to get images of the insides of drawers and cabinets!

2. Document everything. An easy way to do this is to use your video or photographs and write down objects as you see them in your recordings. Another way is to go room-by-room, starting with big-ticket items like TVs or computers, and working your way down. Either way, make your list as thorough as possible

3. Save a copy of your new home inventory in your home, but make sure you have at least one copy in a well-protected area away from your home. If the unthinkable happens, you'll know you have a safe copy as a back up. One great thing about current home inventories is the ready availability of free internet storage. Why not keep a copy on a cloud drive somewhere? Amazon.com is just one of many companies that offer free cloud storage for documents and photos.

4. Don't forget to update your list whenever you buy or sell items!


Do you have enough insurance? Make sure you can count on your insurance company. I rely on State Farm, and my agent Danny Edmonds! I don't know what we'd do without him!

State Farm has created a great home inventory worksheet! The Insurance Information Institute has an online inventory tool that is absolutely free! Both of these can be awesome resources as you create your own home inventory.

Take the Home Inventory Challenge with me! Use IIIs online inventory tool to create your home inventory, and post here about your experience. Was it easy? Was it too complicated? I am going to be transitioning from a paper inventory to their online inventory, and I will let you know how it goes!

Information in this post came from AAA, State Farm, and the Insurance Information Institute.

Natural Hair Care

Having a family goal of saving money and using more natural products has led me to some strange places, but one I'm actually enjoying is natural hair care. I have long hair, and I don't use anything on it like mousse, gel, hair spray, etc. I used to use just shampoo and conditioner, every other day. However, I suffer horribly from dry scalp and flakes. My mom-in-love suggested I go to a no-shampoo method. I had tried once before, following the curly girl method (though I'm still not too sure about the plop!). I didn't like the way my hair looked using CG. My m-i-l reassured me that this was different. I was skeptical, but I thought I'd give it a try. So here we go.

I used a mixture of baking soda in water instead of shampoo. I wet my hair as usual, and right there in the shower, mixed up about a tablespoons' worth of baking soda with the hot shower water in a cup. I slowly poured it over my head and massaged it in, then rinsed thoroughly.

After my shower, I used a spray bottle and thoroughly sprayed my hair with vinegar. I only had the regular kind, so I used that. Oh vinegar, what a tangy smell you have. Truth? It made me crave some salt-n-vinegar chips...

Anyway, I was able to use my pick to comb my hair with very little tugging, so the vinegar did the job of de-tangling well enough. It took about half an hour for the smell to dissipate, but eventually it vanished, leaving me fresh smelling hair.
Now it's a day later. This is usually my skip-it hairdo day, during which I *might* brush or pick it out, but usually just ponytail it and call it good. Today, though, my hair feels very soft and is not tangly (unusual!) so I have left it down.

(don't laugh at my admittedly laughable self-portrait skillz)

So far, so good. My head hasn't itched, which means this method hasn't made my dry scalp act up, I haven't had any yucky flakes, and my hair's not tangled. I'll let you know how this goes.

(and money-wise, you can't beat it...a tablespoons' worth of baking soda is about $0.03 worth, and even using a thorough spritzing of white vinegar is not even $0.01 worth! So 4 cents per cleansing, 15 times per month, approximately, and 12 months per year is about $7.20 per year!)

Jewelry Knock-off: Holly Yashi Greta Necklace

Holly Yashi has a gorgeous wedding necklace called "Greta."

It is lovely. It is so feminine. It is so $160. Ouch!

But looooook at it:

So I decided to make my own...

First, I recruited my 'help'

Then, I shooed the 'help' away. Sorry, Mini-me, maybe next time...

I had the components in my stash, but for price comparison I used

one heart clasp, just because

$8.23 from Fire Mountain Gems

Several colors of Swarovski crystal pearls and crystals, totalling $5.64 worth.

Pearls:

Creamrose in 12 mm, 6mm, & 3mm

Copper in 8mm & 4 mm

Powder green in 6 mm

Vintage gold in 6 mm

Crystals:

Moonlight in 6mm

Golden Shadow in 8mm

Air Blue Opal in 3mm

Indicolite in 4mm & 3mm

Erinite in 4mm

I generally purchase mixed-color lots and separate them myself to save money.

One length of chain, approximately 33" worth, along with miscellaneous head pins and jump rings, worth about $1.

My grand total for materials? About $15.

and...the finished product:

So what do you think?