Being the owner of your holiday home, you know the house inside out and what are the articles that are there and where. But when you appoint a caretaker to take care of the property, you would expect that he too knows the whereabouts of all the articles in the house to manage the property efficiently. Moreover if you have hired a property management company, based on availability there are chances of the company sending a new property manager every now and then when new guests come to stay in your holiday home. What about the valuables you have kept in the house? Unless they are aware of the inventory, they will neither be able to manage the property effectively, nor will they be able to attend to the guests’ requests. So how do you tell them about your holiday home inventory?
I think the best solution is to maintain a photo-book of the inventory of your holiday home. I know it’s a tedious job, but it’s a one-time effort that you need to put in. The main advantage of preparing a photo-book of inventory is that your caretaker can easily keep track of all the articles. Plus it can also work as an inspection list for him to see that all the articles are in place and nothing needs to be replaced or repaired, etc.
PREPARING A PHOTO-BOOK INVENTORY FOR YOUR CARETAKER:
1. First things first; make a checklist of the articles you have in your holiday home. I would suggest instead of trying to remember and making the checklist, go to one room, make the list and then go to the next room and do the same. This way chances of missing out any article is minimal. Once you have prepared the checklist, strike-out the articles which you think should not go to the photo-book of inventory. I would suggest, breakable articles, any valuables, easily movable or easy-to-carry articles should be given more importance. So, now you have a final list ready.
2. The second step is to click photographs of these articles. Click one article, strike it out from the list and go to the next article. While clicking photographs make sure there is enough light in the room. Next step will be to get the prints.
3. When you are placing the photographs in the album, give a unique number to each photograph. So that you have something like: The bed lampshade is No. 4 or the inflatable pool is No. 8 or the solar water heater in the kitchen is No. 17. I will discuss how numbering the photographs will help you later.
4. Before you delete the photographs from the camera, create a folder in your desktop and save them, giving them exactly the same number as that of the photo-book of inventory. Which means, the No. 4 article should be named as 4.jpg in your folder; so on and so forth.
5. No you are ready. Give the photo-book of inventory to the caretaker and ask him to match the articles with the photographs, one room at a time.
WHY NUMBERING THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE PHOTO-BOOK OF INVENTORY IS IMPORTANT:
Now if your caretaker or the property manager calls you to report that a particular article is damaged, missing or out of order, instead of guessing which lampshade is broken, he can tell you that the No. 4 article in the holiday home inventory is damaged. You can correspond the photograph saved by the same number in your desktop. You can thus immediately make arrangements to replace it or take corrective measures.
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