The photo checklist to run before you move your parent

Photograph before anyone touches anything

The moment a helpful relative starts "just tidying one room", the record is gone. Go round the house with your phone before any of that begins — ideally before you tell anyone the date.

Work in daylight with every curtain open and every light on. Take more than you think you need; storage is not the constraint, and you will never regret an extra photo of a socket.

Set three rules before you start and keep them for the whole house. One: photograph the room before you photograph its contents. Two: photograph every cupboard, wardrobe and drawer with the door open, even if it looks empty. Three: never move an object to get a better picture until you have photographed it where it stands.

If two of you are doing it, one photographs and one writes a list of room names in the order they were shot. That list becomes your folder structure an hour later and saves you from four hundred unsorted images.

Budget an hour for a small flat, two to three for a family house with a loft and a garage.

The room-by-room shot list

The same six shots in every room, in the same order. Repetition is what makes the set usable later.

For each room: one wide shot from the doorway, one wide from the opposite corner, one of each wall, and then the contents. Say the room name out loud in a short video clip at the start of each room if you find that easier than keeping notes.

Cupboards, wardrobes and chests get their own frames with the doors open and drawers pulled out. Under beds counts as a location. So does the top of a wardrobe.

Before anything comes off a wall, photograph the wall with the pictures still on it. People forget how a room actually looked, and it matters if there is any question about condition or if you want to hang things the same way in the new place.

• Wide from the doorway, wide from the opposite corner
• Each wall, straight on, including behind furniture where you can
• Every cupboard, wardrobe and chest with the doors open and drawers out
• Under every bed, on top of every wardrobe, inside every blanket box
• Floor and ceiling in any room where condition might matter
• Every wall with its pictures, mirrors and shelves still in place
• The view from each window, so you can identify the room later

The close-ups that save hours later

This is the part people skip and regret. Everything below takes seconds and answers a question you cannot otherwise answer once the house is empty.

The cables behind the television and behind the internet router are the classic. Photograph them plugged in, from close enough to read which lead goes into which socket. Then photograph the remote controls laid out together.

Model and serial plates matter for anything with a motor, a battery or a warranty: appliances, mobility equipment, the boiler, the alarm panel. Get close enough that the numbers are legible without zooming.

Photograph every meter with the reading visible and the date on your phone doing the work. Photograph the fuse box with the cover off, the stopcock, and the boiler controls as they are currently set.

Keys are the other quiet time-saver: lay each key next to a label, or photograph each key held up in front of the door it opens.

And photograph anything valuable or sentimental individually, with a ruler or a coin beside it for scale, and any maker's mark or hallmark in a second shot. That is the record an insurer or a valuer will ask for.

• Cables behind the TV, router and any equipment, plugged in and legible
• Model and serial plates: appliances, boiler, alarm, mobility equipment
• Every meter with its reading, plus the fuse box and stopcock
• Each key, next to or in front of the door it opens
• Valuables individually, with something for scale and a shot of any mark
• The contents of the medicine cupboard shelf, as a record of what was there
• Any damage, crack or stain that already exists, room by room

Documents, meters and the paperwork drawer

Photograph the paperwork where you find it, before it gets carried around in a bag.

Open the drawer or the box file, photograph the contents as a whole, then photograph each document flat, one per frame, readable. Deeds, insurance policies, utility bills with the account numbers visible, service contracts, warranties, the vehicle documents, anything with a reference number on it.

Do the same for the noticeboard, the fridge door and the inside of the kitchen cupboard where phone numbers get written. Those scribbled numbers are frequently the only record of a neighbour, a handyman or a service.

Photograph the front and back of anything that has both. Photograph the envelope too if the address matters.

This is a record of what exists and where it was found — nothing more. Keep the originals together in one box that travels with you rather than on the van, and note in your list which documents you have physically taken and which stayed in the house.

One last frame: the meter readings again on the actual day of the move, with the date visible.

The places everyone forgets

Go back round specifically for these. They are where the arguments and the losses come from.

The loft. The shed. The garage rafters. The back of the wardrobe behind the coats. The chest freezer in the garage. The bureau with the drop-down front. The cupboard under the stairs. The airing cupboard. The space behind the sofa. The kitchen drawer everyone calls "the drawer".

Also: anything already lent to somebody else. Photograph the note, or write one now with the item, the person and the date, and put it in the same folder.

Outbuildings and gardens count. Photograph garden furniture, tools, ladders, planters, and anything fixed to a wall or fence. If there is a car, photograph it from four corners with the mileage and the fuel gauge visible.

Finally, walk out of the front door, turn round, and photograph the house itself from the street, the front door with its number, and the approach. On a hard day, six months from now, that is often the photograph the family actually wants.

How to file the photos so they can be found

Four hundred images in a camera roll is not a record. Give it twenty minutes the same evening while you still remember which cupboard was which.

Make one folder for the move, dated. Inside it, one folder per room using the room names your parent uses — "back bedroom", not "bedroom 3". Add folders for documents, meters and keys, valuables, and outside.

Rename anything you will need to find fast, in date-first format: 2026-08-12-boiler-serial. Everything else can stay as it is inside its room folder.

Then back it up twice, in two places, one of which is not your phone. Share the folder with whoever else is involved and tell them what is in it. A sibling who can look at the loft from three hundred miles away asks far fewer questions.

Write one short index page listing the folders and anything unusual — items on loan, documents you removed, anything already promised to somebody. Keep that page with the move paperwork, not only in the cloud.

Questions