A serious topic, Keeping a shop inventory your loved ones can find.

[dbhost]

Guys (and gals) most of you are married folks and have families. As you know death has been a huge topic on my mind since my beautiful bride passed rather unexpectedly last year.

Since then I have been involved with a widows and widowers support group, and one of the recurring themes is, he or she passed away with this huge quantity of stuff, that the surviving family can't identify, and has no clue as to the value or even how to go about selling or reallocating the items to new homes.

I can't tell you how much easier it makes life for those left behind when they know where to find your important documents, have a document that inventories your XYZ stuff. In my wifes case her jewelry and collectibles, in most of our cases, our workshops and tools, the guys that hunt the guns and related equipment.

Make, and keep updated an inventory of your stuff, and maybe even decide where you want it to go should you no longer need it... If for no other reason, it would sure help you out in case of an insurable loss...

[twistsol]

I keep various spreadsheets with tool inventory including brand, model, purchase date, and purchase price, book inventories, electronics and appliances, etc and all the worksheets are on Google Sheets and shared with my oldest daughter who is the only one that understands what any of the tools are.

Thank you for the reminder. I haven't added any of my 2022 purchases to the sheets yet so I need to get that done.

Book inventory needs to be updated desperately.

[GrumpyDad]

A nice article on this topic...

https://kcwg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/NL20-02.pdf

Page 15

[Condoman44]

We had a cousins home burn down and they lost much. The insurance took good care of them, rebuilt the house and a year later wanted to reimburse them for all the little things that go in the house. In many cases they were clueless.

It was from this that I took a lesson. Make an inventory of everything and put a price on all of it. My rule is anything $25 or over goes in the inventory. Provide documentation when possible and put the list in the cloud as well as other safe places.

This was 5 years ago when I started my inventory and it has grown to 300 items from lawn furniture to tools. I also have a document I call IYRT or If You're Reading This where I keep all my account information, will location, obituary, etc.

It will make my exit easier for those that will manage my life when I am gone.

[Jim Frye]

I've been wrestling with this for some time now. Nearly all of my power tools were free, fairly low priced (mostly Ryobi), and are likely not worth a whole lot. What's a highly modified BT3000 and an unused BT3100 worth? These are the most expensive tools I have. Add to that none of my relatives are interested in woodworking, I see the contents of my shop out in the driveway in an estate sale. The last inventory I did for insurance coverage was less than $10 K for the whole contents. I really need to think on this some more. When my FIL passed, none of his Sons wanted any of his tools because they were "just Craftsman". I took a bunch, mostly because they were his, but ended up using them in my woodworking. I did give his 9" direct drive table saw to a friend who used to to make wooden toys for his kids. What do you think that saw was worth?

[dbhost]

Some stuff is now considered obsolete. It is for example, a very tough sell to even give away a 9" table saw, but for the most part, you can look up just about any tool on say FB marketplace, and Craigslist and get an idea of what current market price is. No your BT3K, either of them, are not going to get what they went for new, but they do have value. I bought mine from a member here a LONG time ago and paid if I remember right about $150.00 then for the saw, accessories, wide table yadda yadda yadda. It had been in a shop that had a fire but was undamaged except for the fence that I fixed... And I added the Ryobi legs to the wide table kit, actually they were technically Craftsman but... you get the idea...Point being, there was and is value there, and I wouldn't want my stuff being dumped for pennies on the dollar when the money earned could go to help family members in need. In my case not a big concern, but I would HATE to have left Debi with no way of knowing what the stuff was worth had I gone first... It may not be a huge amount of money, but it would help pay the bills...

[Black walnut]

This reminds me that I really do need to do this. A few years ago when my father passed away I got the job of going through all his gun related collections since I was the one in the family that knew what just about everything was. None of my brothers had much of a clue about most of it. My mom didn't know either.

Beyond lists or inventory and descriptions if you have hobbies where you use information in your memory do your descendants a huge favor and write things down. MY father had custom rifles for bench shooting one of which was a wildcat cartridge. It took me a bunch of work to detective and trial and error to discover his load(s). There were also things he did as a hobby gunsmith that I wished he would have documented. He made 3 .22 rimfire target actions, two were as complete rifles. Gladly he made sketch notes of the triggers geometry. There is simply lots he never documented, simple oversight not thinking past his own life and use. He was humble and perhaps did not appreciate the legacy he was leaving whether he wanted to or not. Both of my sons have examples of his work and when I pass they will have more. Lucky for me I am teaching my boys as much as I can about what I do with my gun hobby. Woodworking they should be able to figure out with the print resources that I have and what is available if they so desire.

The other big lesson is that at the end it is all just stuff and most is not worth nearly what it is to the owner. Used tools often are worth garage sale prices unless stolen or lost in a fire and your insurance replaces them.

[capncarl]

Somewhere I read a statement that fits this discussion. It goes something like this.
“When I die I hope my wife doesn’t sell my tools for what I told her I paid for them! “

[Black walnut]

For sure! I usually don't disclose what they cost.