My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a new home. The current owners of the property we're buying have kept meticulous records. They have a spreadsheet detailing:

• The type of home update
• When the update was made
• Who did the service (or where it was purchased from)

This information is surprisingly useful to know, and has helped us make some decisions on what to update and what not to update. It also gives us a good picture of the relative ages of each home system (e.g. hot water heater, HVAC units, etc.).

While discussing the selling of our current home with our realtor, I figured I could provide dates for when some of the similar updates here were done. I assumed that I had emails on these items, but it turns out I don't. Maybe I paid for some of these things via a check? And maybe the receipt they sent was a hard-copy? Regardless, I am unable to pinpoint when our hot water heater was installed, for example (this kind of thing is useful to know when selling a home, it turns out).

It's frustrating to know that I had work done to my home but cannot locate the invoice showing me who did it or when it was done. Had I kept better records, this wouldn't have been a problem. Going forward, I intend to do a better job.