Manual method
- List providers and old account addresses, including closed contracts.
- In each official portal download original bills and contracts for the available years.
- Save related emails and independently held documents such as leases and inventories; identify duplicates rather than deleting originals blindly.
- Check that each expected billing period is represented and request missing periods through secure provider support.
Coverage and limitations: This is a general workflow; there is no single export for housing/utilities. Provider-held consumption data, bills and contractual documents can have different availability. The reference is preservation guidance, not a menu guarantee.
Size and time to allow
Illustrative planning size: 0.2 GB; scenario range 0.01–5 GB. This is a storage-planning example, not a measured average. Your archive may be smaller or larger. Several years of household bills, contracts, meter records and a few property documents.
Preparation and hands-on time: Budget 30–90 minutes for several providers; older records may take additional days to obtain.
For the 0.2 GB example, network transfer alone is approximately:
| Connection download speed | Transfer estimate |
|---|---|
| 10 Mbit/s | 4 min |
| 50 Mbit/s | 46 sec |
| 100 Mbit/s | 23 sec |
These calculations use decimal GB and 70% of the advertised speed. Tiny transfers can take longer because of startup overhead. Local exports do not need an internet download; use these numbers only for a network transfer. Preparation, retries, extraction, checking and a cloud upload are additional; use upload speed for the latter.
Where and how to keep it
An encrypted USB key can hold this example, but keep another independent copy on an external drive or in private encrypted cloud storage. A USB key alone is easily lost and is not a complete preservation plan.
Create a dated home_utilities/YYYY-MM-DD/ folder. Keep received originals unchanged, use a separate working copy, and note the account/profile, selected dates, formats and known gaps in a private README. Compare file sizes, check any supplied checksums, and open sample files from the backup before considering the task finished. Repeat after meaningful additions. Follow the storage, archive-checking and large-file guide.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.