5 Ways to Keep Your Home Office Info From Going Up In Smoke
For years I have talked and written about how important it is to be ready for any type of disaster, including floods, hurricanes and fire. When my younger sister called a few days ago to tell me that my parents’ house – the house I grew up in – had caught on fire, those tips hit close to home.The fire started in the kitchen and spread to the attic. By the time the firefighters put out the fire, two bedrooms, the kitchen and a few hallways were destroyed.Fortunately, my dad’s home office was untouched. After the firefighters let my parents into the house, my dad went to his home office and took out some important papers. Years before, he had put important papers in one file and kept it where he knew he’d find it.Aside from making sure your home has plenty of smoke detectors and that you have considerate neighbors who will call 911 when they see smoke billowing out of your home, there are a few more things you can do to prepare for disaster.Before you buy homeowner’s insurance or renew your current policy, understand clearly what your insurance company does and doesn’t cover. Don’t assume that your office equipment is covered.
Videotape your entire house and as you’re taping, describe what you’re seeing. Make two backups of the video files and store them off-site.
Make a file with insurance contact information and any other account information you’ll need. Keep it in the front of your file cabinet. Go one step further and scan the documents you’ll need in case of emergency and make two backups.
Use an external hard drive to backup your information and keep two separate backups somewhere other than in your home office.
Protect photos by uploading them to an online photo storage company like snapfish or photobucket. If you still own packets of negatives, don’t store them in your attic. In fact, you may want to reconsider storing anything in your attic that needs to be temperature controlled or that you don’t want destroyed by fire. A fire in your attic isn’t easy to detect. My parents will attest to that.It was hard to watch the report of the fire on the news (slow news day?) but fortunately my parents are fine, and the walls, cabinets and some furniture are all that need to be replaced. You can’t predict if or when you may face a disaster that will affect your home office, but if you plan ahead, you can be prepared for the worse.
