Your belongings
Contents restoration and pack-out
How belongings are inventoried, cleaned or packed out, how salvage is judged item by item, and how the contents part of the claim is limited and paid.
Get Help With Your Restoration Project What it costs
Written by HyreRestore Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The short answer
Contents restoration covers everything in the house that is not the house: furniture, clothing, electronics and documents. It is a separate scope from the structure. On a homeowners policy, personal property has its own limit and sub-limits, paid at ACV or RCV. It starts with an inventory, and nothing goes before the adjuster sees it.
If this is happening right now
Before anyone carries anything out, photograph and video every room from the doorway, then each damaged item with the damage in view. Ten minutes of footage is the evidence for the whole contents claim. If a crew is ready to start moving things and nothing has been photographed, ask them to wait.
What should you know before anything leaves the house?
Separately inventoried, separately priced, and a separate part of the claim with its own limit.
Nothing should leave before it is recorded, photographed, and given a condition and a room.
Soft, porous items soaked in sewage or floodwater, or heavy soot, may have to go. A company that promises everything is recoverable is selling, not assessing.
Jewelry, firearms, collectibles and cash can carry caps far below the overall contents limit unless the items were scheduled.
When do belongings need a formal process?
Some losses are small enough to handle yourself. These are the conditions where a documented, inventoried process pays for itself.
Sewage or floodwater makes salvage a health decision, not only a money one.
Soot is corrosive and spreads, and odor reaches rooms the flames never did.
Walls, floors and cabinets cannot be worked on around furniture.
A contents claim without an inventory is a negotiation without evidence.
Photos, documents, art and instruments have a short window and specialist routes.
Belongings would otherwise sit in a damaged building for weeks.
How is salvage judged, item by item?
Whether something can be restored depends on the material, what reached it and how long it sat. These are the factors a contents technician weighs.
Glass, metal, sealed ceramic and finished hard surfaces clean well. Upholstery, mattresses, particleboard and insulation absorb. The EPA notes porous materials such as carpet may have to be thrown away if they become moldy.
Clean water is a drying problem. Category 3 water and heavy soot are contamination problems.
Wet paper, textiles and leather change fast, and soot gets harder to remove the longer it sits.
Paying more to clean an item than to replace it is a legitimate reason to write it off.
A different test. Photos and documents can be worth saving when the numbers say otherwise, and you get to decide.
A cabinet with lifting veneer or a device with a corroded board is not saved by cleaning the outside.
What does contents work involve, in order?
Documentation leads, and the return delivery is checked against the same inventory.
Room-by-room photos and video, then close-ups of damaged items. Do your own set as well; it costs nothing and the whole contents claim rests on it.
Each item recorded with a description, room, condition, photo and box number. Ask for a copy at the start. The contents inventory builder helps you keep your own.
Salvageable, non-salvageable and specialist. Non-salvageable items stay documented, and where possible kept, until the adjuster has seen them or released you in writing.
Boxed by room, labeled against the inventory, and moved to the facility. You should be able to ask where your things are and get an answer.
Methods matched to material: ultrasonic baths for hard goods, wet or dry cleaning for textiles, HEPA vacuuming and dry sponges for soot, odor chambers, and corrosion treatment for electronics.
Wet documents and photos can be frozen to stop damage, then vacuum freeze-dried. Electronics go to a technician. Art and instruments go to conservators.
Climate-controlled storage billed by the month, so the rebuild timeline is also a contents cost.
Items returned, placed and checked against the inventory. Raise anything missing or damaged in writing at the time.
Clean on site, or pack out?
These are the two routes, and they can be combined: most of the house cleaned in place, some items packed out. Make the choice deliberately and get it in writing, because it changes the bill and the timeline.
| Route | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Clean in place | Items cleaned and left in the house, sometimes moved to a dry room. Cheaper and faster, and only workable when there is dry, secure space the rebuild will not need. |
| Move on site | Belongings moved to a garage, a storage pod in the driveway or an unaffected floor. No transport cost, and you stay near your things. |
| Pack-out to a facility | Inventoried, boxed, trucked, cleaned, deodorized and stored until the house is ready. Suits heavy smoke, Category 3 water or a whole-house rebuild. Adds handling, transport, monthly storage and a return delivery. |
| Specialist work | Documents, photos, electronics, art, textiles and instruments sent to companies that do only that: freeze-drying for wet paper, ultrasonic cleaning for hard goods, corrosion treatment for circuit boards. |
| Non-salvageable | Items recorded, photographed and priced on the inventory, then disposed of with the adjuster’s agreement. The paperwork is the point. |
| Kept by you | Items you keep and handle yourself, such as anything private. List them on the inventory anyway so the claim is complete. |
What is unsafe to handle?
Some belongings carry the contamination they were exposed to. Handle these with care, or leave them to the crew.
Category 3 water carries pathogens. Keep children, pets and anyone immunocompromised away from soaked soft goods.
Do not keep them.
Soot is a respiratory hazard and smears when rubbed. Leave it for the right cleaning method.
Keep them unplugged and switched off.
Get help with a contents restoration project
Free, with no obligation. A person at HyreRestore replies by email. Not an emergency line: matching is not live yet, and nobody is sent to the property.
What moves the price
A contents bill is built from handling and time, not square footage. It is the part of a restoration invoice people expect least and check least.
| Factor | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Volume | A whole house is a different job from one room. Priced by labor and boxes, not by the value of what is in them. |
| Inventory labor | Item-by-item recording takes time. It also protects the rest of the claim, so it is the wrong line to cut. |
| On site or packed out | Pack-out adds packing materials, loading, transport, facility handling, storage and return delivery, each a separate line. |
| Storage time | Billed monthly. A rebuild that slips by three months takes the contents bill with it. |
| Cleaning method and specialists | Wiping and HEPA vacuuming is one rate; ultrasonic, textile, odor-chamber and specialist work are others. |
| Exposure and disposal | Category 3 water or heavy soot means more protective gear, more disposal and more written off. |
HyreRestore publishes no average contents restoration price. Volume, exposure, how much is packed out and how long storage runs move it too far for one figure to help you check the invoice in front of you.
How does the claim treat your belongings?
How homeowners, renters and flood policies are built, not what yours says. Your declarations page decides, and the contents section is worth reading before a loss.
| Question | How the claim treats it |
|---|---|
| Is there a separate limit? | Yes. Personal property is its own part of a homeowners or renters policy, with its own limit. FEMA says a flood policy can cover buildings, the contents in a building, or both, so contents may need buying separately. |
| What are sub-limits? | Caps on categories such as jewelry, watches, firearms, silverware, collectibles, business property and cash. They apply even when the overall limit is far from used up. |
| What does scheduling do? | Lists named items on the policy, often with an appraisal, for an agreed value outside the sub-limit. It has to be done before the loss. |
| ACV or replacement cost? | With actual cash value you are paid less depreciation. With replacement cost, depreciation can be released once you replace and show the receipt. Compare them in ACV or replacement cost. |
| Who proves what I owned? | You do. Photos, receipts, manuals, card statements and old insurance schedules all count. The III says a home inventory speeds up this part of the claim. |
| Are pack-out and storage paid? | They can be treated as part of the loss. Whether they come out of the contents limit or elsewhere varies, so ask the adjuster and get it in writing. |
| What about items that cannot be saved? | They are settled item by item from the inventory. That is why the inventory must exist before anything goes. |
Coverage is decided by your own policy and the peril, not by what is typical. Read the declarations page, and where the answer matters, put the question to your insurer in writing.
The rule that protects the most money.
Throw nothing away until the adjuster has seen it or released you in writing. The Insurance Information Institute gives the same advice. Photograph it, list it, bag it, put it in the garage. If something truly cannot stay for health reasons, get written agreement first; an email is enough.
What to ask before you sign
In what format, and when?
What drives that recommendation here?
What happens if the rebuild runs long?
Has the adjuster agreed before anything is disposed of?
You, or a specialist?
What to have ready
Before anything moves.
With the damage visible.
For anything of value.
So you know the contents limit and sub-limits.
Flagged for the technician on day one.
Where this goes wrong
A room photographed as it was, however grim, is worth more to the claim than a room made presentable. Tidy after the camera, not before.
In one lump sum, no one can tell what was charged for moving furniture and what for drying walls. Ask for two documents. It is also how sub-limits get missed.
The overall contents limit is not the limit on jewelry or firearms. The only way to raise those caps is to schedule items before anything happens.
A rebuild that stalls costs money in a place no one is watching. Agreeing the reconstruction scope early saves on contents too.
Photos, documents and family papers have time-sensitive routes, such as freezing and then freeze-drying. Flag them on day one, while the option is still open.
Water and soot both corrode circuit boards, and switching a device on can finish it. Leave it off and have a technician look.
Your inquiry
Tell us about the damage
Nothing goes to a restoration company unless you agree.
A person reads it and replies by email, free and with no obligation. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a dispatch line and nobody is sent to the property.
Get Help With Your Restoration Project
One short form: your address and how to reach you. A person at HyreRestore reads it and replies.
Questions
What is a pack-out?
Is contents restoration covered by insurance?
Can I throw away ruined belongings before the adjuster comes?
Can wet photos and documents be saved?
What about electronics that got wet or sooty?
What cannot be restored?
How do I prove what I owned?
What are scheduled personal property and sub-limits?
Can I do the inventory myself?
Written and audited by
HyreRestore Research Desk
Primary-source research and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a restoration company and not an insurance adjuster.
We read the federal agency guidance, the state insurance statute or the industry standard ourselves, and we publish the rule with the document it came from and the date we read it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. The counts below are taken from the pages on this site.
- 56
- source documents linked from these pages
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- government (.gov) domains among them
- 0
- average prices published without a source
- 0
- restoration jobs we perform
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. A mold rule comes from the EPA, a flood rule from FEMA and the NFIP, a claim rule from the state insurance statute. We do not cite an article that cites a source.
- Every figure carries its retrieval date. Guidance is revised and statutes are amended. A number without the date it was read cannot be checked.
- Paywalled standards are named, not quoted. IICRC S500 and S520 define the categories and classes of water and mold work. We describe their public structure and say plainly when the controlling text sits behind a purchase.
- Safety before the claim. Electricity near water, sewage, smoke and mold come first on every page where they apply. We explain the work; we do not tell you to do it yourself.
- We do not dry, remediate or rebuild anything, we do not adjust claims, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention.
Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Information on this page is general and may vary by location, building code, zoning, the condition of your house and your own circumstances. It is not legal, insurance, medical or engineering advice.
HyreRestore is not a restoration contractor and not an insurance adjuster: we dry nothing, remediate nothing and rebuild nothing, and we do not supervise or warrant anyone's work.
This page explains the work so you can read a scope, judge the company that wrote it and follow your own claim.