While we are organizing and even afterwards
 

A couple of years ago, I answered an ad on Kijiji (want ads). It was a young mother of 3 girls who lost her home due to fire. Their insurance coverage was not enough to cover her sewing goodies and she was looking for donations from fellow sew-ers who could spare anything...patterns, notions, fabric, anything at all. So, I went through my closet(s) of fabrics and such and ended up giving her 5 large trash bags filled to the brim of fabric and patterns and notions...She was so surprised and so grateful, ....Her girls rifled through picking out fabrics they liked and wanted mom to sew for them. So excited indeed.

It felt so good to know how much she appreciated it all. But, it made me take inventory and put a value on my goodies...I was shocked when I added it all up. Especially all the notions and patterns...My advice to everyone is to do a rough calculation and make sure you have enough coverage. I would be absolutely devastated to lose my collection.

That's awesome to help a fellow quilter in need...
Yes, it is Very important to take pics and try and calculate the value of our hobby...

Oh I know. When I put riders on my home ins. for tools and sewing I thought $10,000 each would be enough. The agent said I was way off. My machines alone are at $15,000 and fabric and notions are at $20,000 and the tools went to $20,000 - His mother is a quilter and she also collects Vintage Beauties so he knows a wee bit. And I can increase it as I accumulate more goodies-Yeah Right if I do that I will need a much bigger house.I already take up 2 rooms and it is spilling out into the dining room Its a good thing I live alone.I hate looking for lost -crushed people-Takes to much time away from creating LOL

That is an excellent idea to have this stuff covered on your insurance. Must do this.

When I sort/clean/reorganize, I select fabric that I no longer want or like and give it to a Mennonite Church in a near-by community. They have a mission in two Eastern European countries that teaches women to sew. The local ladies have so much fun going through the things I donate. I just feel great knowing that I have a small part in letting women who have so little get a chance to improve their lives.

Between dfs garage, gun collection and other expensive items we have an insurance policy that covers everything. We pay out the wazoo but when your talking 30k in small tools, and over 500k in large tools and classic cars and parts, a couple grand in guns and ammo (don't worry all locked up in a fire proof safe in the basement) and then all my sewing stuff and electronics we have a huge policy. We needed to make sure if anything happened we could rebuild and replace everything.

You have to be careful helping out people saying how they lost everything in a fire and asking for donations.
There have been several on here asking for donations. I think the people in charge has tightened that up and I haven't seen anymore for a while. I donate what I don't want to goodwill or salvation army.

We lost our home, all of its contents, our RV and car in the PG&E San Bruno gas explosion of 2010. We thought we had done a good job of documenting our belongings by taking videos of them all. Unfortunately we stored them in our RV which was also lost in the blast. I strongly recommend that you take loads of pictures, but that you transfer them to DVD's and give copies to family and friends not in the area. Our insurance company, Hartford, by contract still owes us over $200,000 which they will never pay. They signed us off. Insurance is not all you think it will be plus the hours listing all of the items plus where, when they were purchased and their replacement cost.

This was something we discussed with our agent back in the summer. Also ladies check on the values of your jewelry and guns. I didn't like the idea that the Ins. company wanted all the serial numbers on our guns. Will be shocked how many things you don't inventory or have enough ins. on. We had replacement on the house and thought we had enough on other things, WRONG! Our security system and safe helped out alot.
Glad you could help her, I remember a while back when we sent stuff to a quilter on the forum who lost her goodies. The lady sent the nicest card, I think it is great how everyone on here is so good hearted!...
We used to donate to Goodwill until we found out about the employees wages! We now give to local church thrift stores that keeps the money in the community.
Ins. is like everything thing else Document, document, document!!!!!!

I was thinking the same thing. We heard of a student at our college who had all her money stolen at WalMart and had nothing for her kids for Christmas. The staff went out a bought her a car load of things for the kids (some very expensive) and when we delivered them to her house the living was filled with presents. At first we thought someone else had donated but she explained that they were all from her family and she had even bought all 3 kids bikes. Its too bad something like this makes a person a little cautious and cynical.