IICRC CertifiedS740 standard for contents restoration
Owner-Led JobsThe owner signs off on every inventory
Licensed & InsuredMassachusetts contractor, fully covered
Direct Insurance BillingContents coverage billed to your carrier
Contents Restoration and Pack-Out Across Boston, Built for the Claim File
A contents restoration pack-out is the documented removal of your belongings from a damaged home so they can be cleaned, deodorized, and stored while the structure is repaired. The operative word is documented. After a fire, your policy’s personal property coverage pays for what can be proven: what you owned, what condition it was in, what it cost to restore, and what could not be saved. A pack-out done with garbage bags and a rented truck destroys that proof in an afternoon. A pack-out done to the IICRC S740 contents standard creates it, item by item, before anything leaves the driveway.
The claim context explains why we are strict about it. Fire produces some of the largest personal property losses in the insurance world, and the NFPA’s fire loss research puts US home fire property damage in the billions of dollars every year. A meaningful share of that number is contents, and contents are exactly where undocumented claims get cut. Our fire damage restoration crews therefore photograph and tag every item before it moves, and the same inventory follows each piece through cleaning, storage, and return.
That discipline pays off at the adjuster meeting. Because every entry carries a photo, a condition note, and a restoration decision, the contents portion of your claim arrives as a verifiable ledger instead of a memory exercise. The wider paperwork strategy, from first notice of loss to the final supplement, lives on our insurance claims help page, and the contents inventory is one of its strongest exhibits. Ansy Chevalier says it plainly: “The house has one claim line. Your belongings have hundreds. The inventory is what keeps every one of them honest.”
When Contents Stay, and When They Go
Not every fire loss needs a full pack-out, and recommending one anyway is how contractors pad claims. Lightly affected rooms can often be cleaned in place, with contents covered and protected while crews work around them. The scale tips toward a pack-out when residue on the contents is heavy enough to need equipment we cannot bring into a living room, when the structure itself needs demolition, odor treatment, or reconstruction that requires empty rooms, or when leaving items in a house full of airborne soot would recontaminate them faster than we could clean them. We make that call room by room during the walkthrough, write the reasoning into the scope, and pack only what the loss justifies.
Every item in the inventory gets:
- A photograph in place, before handling
- A unique tag number on the box and the manifest
- Room of origin and packing date
- Condition and residue notes
- A restore, question, or total-loss call
- Cleaning method and result after treatment
Do not throw anything away before it is photographed, even burned items. Discarded contents are the hardest dollars to recover on any fire claim. Call (781) 390-9855 first.
Every item is photographed and tagged before it leaves the property.
From Pack-Out to Move-Back: How Does the Chain of Custody Work?
Chain of custody is a phrase borrowed from evidence rooms, and we use it deliberately. From the moment a box is sealed in your living room to the moment it is opened during move-back, the manifest shows where that box was, who handled it, and what was done to its contents. Nothing rides in an open truck bed, nothing sits in an unheated garage through a Boston winter, and nothing gets cleaned without its result being recorded against its tag number.
Storage conditions are part of the standard, not a luxury. Our contents go to a climate-controlled facility, because temperature swings and humidity do real damage to furniture joints, veneers, electronics, and photographs, and because a pack-out that returns warped goods has simply traded one loss for another. For a Dorchester Victorian full of original woodwork and three generations of keepsakes, the difference between conditioned storage and a January storage trailer is the difference between restoration and regret.
The pack-out also has to fit around the people it displaces. Most families using a pack out company are simultaneously living in temporary housing on their policy’s additional living expense coverage, so we coordinate the contents schedule with the rebuild schedule, deliver essential items back early when families need them, and time the final move-back to the day the house clears its last inspection. In triple-deckers we run one inventory per unit, since three households on one loss means three separate contents claims that must never blur together. A tenant’s bedroom set and an owner’s basement workshop sit in the same building but on different policies, and the manifests keep them as separate as the carriers do.
High-value and irreplaceable items ride a shorter, tighter loop. Jewelry, firearms, cash, medications, and critical documents are inventoried with you standing there, and they either stay in your possession or travel under a separate signed receipt. Sentimental items that insurance can never really price, wedding albums, a grandmother’s china, a child’s artwork, get flagged during the walkthrough so they are cleaned first and returned first. The claim math treats everything as line items, but the people doing the packing know better, and the process is built to act like it.
- Walkthrough and triageEvery room surveyed with you present, items sorted into restorable, questionable, and total-loss categories per S740 criteria.
- Photograph and tagEach item photographed in place, tagged with a unique number, and entered on the manifest with condition notes.
- Pack and manifestItems packed by category and fragility, boxes sealed and numbered, and the manifest copy shared with you and your adjuster.
- Transport and secure storageContents move to a climate-controlled facility, logged in, and stored by claim with restricted access.
- Clean by categoryEach item cleaned with the method its material and residue require, results recorded against its tag.
- Store until the house is readyRestored contents wait in conditioned storage while the rebuild finishes, however long the rebuild takes.
- Move-back and sign-offBoxes return by room, the manifest is reconciled line by line, and you sign off on the completed inventory.
Numbered, racked and tracked, so what leaves your home comes back.
Contents Cleaning by Category: What Can Actually Be Saved?
Contents cleaning services succeed or fail on triage, because a fire loss holds hundreds of items made of dozens of materials, and no single process treats them all. A cast iron pan, a wool coat, a laptop, and a box of tax records need four different specialists, four different processes, and four different definitions of success. Hard goods, soft goods, electronics, and paper each follow their own track through the IICRC S740 standard, and the honest answer for some items is that restoration costs more than replacement, in which case we document them as total losses rather than billing to clean the unsalvageable. Soot-coated items get residue removed before any of this begins, work that belongs to our soot damage cleaning crews, and heavily smoke-saturated textiles are flagged during the whole-house residue survey described on the smoke damage repair page.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Tanks
High-frequency sound waves create microscopic cavitation bubbles that scrub soot out of crevices hand cleaning cannot reach. Dishware, light fixtures, blinds, ceramics, and hardware come out of the tanks restored at a fraction of replacement cost.
Textile & Soft Contents Processing
Clothing, linens, and soft goods run through specialized wash systems with smoke-specific detergents and deodorization, then hang in conditioned space until they hold no odor. Items that fail the smell test after processing are documented for replacement.
Electronics & Document Recovery
Acidic residue corrodes circuit boards, so electronics get assessed and decontaminated by specialists before power ever touches them again. Wet or smoke-damaged papers and photographs are stabilized and recovered through freeze-drying partners when the originals matter.
Timing shapes the outcome for every category. Acidic residue keeps corroding metal contacts and etching finishes while items sit, so the sooner contents reach controlled cleaning, the higher the save rate and the lower the replacement total your carrier has to absorb. A pack-out that starts within the first days of a loss routinely restores items that the same process, started a month later, would have to write off.
Total losses get their own careful handling. Items beyond restoration are photographed, listed with age and replacement value, and held until your adjuster releases them, because a discarded item is an unprovable item. That non-salvage list often carries as much claim value as the cleaning itself, and assembling it properly is part of the service, not an afterthought. Last updated August 2026.
Textiles, electronics and paper each get a different process and bench.
Before We Box the First Room
What Families Ask About Contents Cleaning and Pack-Outs
What is a pack-out, and when does a fire loss actually need one?
A pack-out is the documented removal of your belongings to an off-site facility for cleaning and storage. It becomes necessary when the structure needs major cleaning or rebuild work, when residue on contents is too heavy to treat in place, or when odor treatment of the house requires the rooms to be empty.
How do I know nothing will get lost or mixed up in storage?
Every item is photographed and tagged before it leaves your home, every box is numbered on a manifest you receive a copy of, and storage is organized by claim with logged access. At move-back the manifest is reconciled line by line and you sign off on it. Chain of custody is the whole design of the service.
Can smoke-damaged electronics and family photos be saved?
Often, yes, if they are handled correctly and quickly. Electronics must stay powered off until specialists remove corrosive residue from boards and contacts, because powering up is what kills them. Photographs and documents are stabilized and recovered through freeze-drying and careful surface cleaning. Items that cannot be saved are documented for replacement value instead.
Who pays for contents cleaning, storage, and the pack-out itself?
On a covered fire loss, the personal property portion of your homeowner policy typically pays for inventory, pack-out, cleaning, storage, and move-back, and we bill your carrier directly. Your policy limits and deductible still apply, which is exactly why the itemized inventory matters: it makes sure the covered value is fully claimed.
What happens to the things that cannot be restored?
Nothing gets discarded quietly. Unsalvageable items are photographed, listed with description, age, and replacement value, and held until your adjuster releases them. That total-loss list becomes the replacement portion of your contents claim, and it is often worth more than the cleaning line, so we build it with the same care.
Hundreds of Items. One Honest Inventory.
Free assessment, photographed inventory from the first box, climate-controlled storage, and direct billing to your carrier on covered losses.