I scanned all of our important documents and photographed our valuables with a digital camera and saved everything to disk. My parents have a copy of the disk in the safe at their house (they live in another state) my insurance agent has a copy in my hard file at his office and my hubby also has a copy at his office. If anything happens I can get my hands on everything I need with a simple phone call-they can email all the scanned images to my hotmail account that can be accessed from anywhere.

I figure if I’m in a situation where I have to grab what I can and run out the door I’m going to have my hands full with three kids, the car keys and my purse. Plus I’m not really comfortable having sensitive info like that out where an intruder could easily get their hands on it. Ours is in a locked filing cabinet. Having copies of everything at different “off-site” locations makes me feel more secure about being able to get my hands on what I need. Another item you should consider is copies of all medications labels you and your family take. Lots of people who had to evacuate from hurricanes had a hard time getting meds at pharmacies they had not purchased from before and there was nobody at their doctors offices back home to get information from. One thing I need to add is a utility bill to prove my residency. Some people had to prove they were residents of a hurricane affected area in order to get emergency benefits and having this would make that process much faster for me.

Scan, scan, scan!!!