Starting to transfer to a spreadsheet instead of my usual paper notebook I list all my electronics in to get a grasp on all my parts (towers, laptops, memory, motherboards, videocards, etc). Lately I’ve been on a kick of labeling all my shelves (medicine, linen, kitchenware) and trying to sort things into random plastic bins I’ve had laying around waiting for a purpose.
I realize I could dive into deep rabbit holes for every category. With electronics I’m thinking of documenting every chip, board, and component along with compatibilities. Pantries and personal goods could be inventoried and auto-reordered, better tracking of my tools and materials with service reminders for equipment, etc etc.
I’ve gone through years where I throw everything away and get rid of anything not used recently and years where I horde everything and anything. Seems moderation in both is key and why keeping it all in mind and documented seems like the right thing to do if you have the time to kill.
tldr, what tips or tricks do you use to keep up with all your shit?
Is this something people do? I thought I was accidentally on some niche hobby community but I think this is aimed at a general audience.
What kinds of things do you inventory? Everything? Electronics? Furniture? You mentioned pantry?
I hope I don’t come off condescending I’m genuinely confused rn.
Everything I’d want replaced by my insurance goes in a LibreOffice spreadsheet.
Never needed to file a claim using it, but it doubles as the place where I record warranty expiration dates, which has come in handy a few times.
It’s also been useful when buying replacements to see how much I paid in the past.
Oh, insurance. That’s a pretty good reason to do this. hmmm
I just do visual inventory for pantry, like there’s a canned meal shelf which has assorted soups or single serve preserved stuff. Same with canned sides (like corn, green beans etc), once a section gets low I just pick a few up to restock it. Used to do pick-up and was useful because I could just walk to the pantry with a tablet and use an app to fill it up. Trying to get away from the whole app-pickup system though. Also have a white board next to the fridge with a constant list we add onto, eventually want to switch that over to a list app so I’m not having to take a picture of it or writing it down to get the things I need at the store.
If you have a deep pantry, inventory is necessary
Well, sort of. For canned and frozen things, I just keep the first expiration date for every thing on a small whiteboard.
No idea how many kidney beans I have, but I know I’ll be eating some before October.
I’ve been getting around to giving a Grocy a try.
It’s a pretty much an ERP system for the household (Even their tagline is “ERP beyond the fridge”)
It supports a whole bunch of things, the least of which is household inventory tracking and it even has the ability to integrate with a barcode scanner. So you can tie it into like a product API to scan the retailer barcodes or tie it into your own DB for lookup for your own custom barcodes
It’s a bit involved if you’re not into self hosting and servers and such though
What does ERP stand for besides “Erotic RolePlay”?
Enterprise Resource Planning is the acronym I know. It’s usually used in a company context and is essentially a system that “can do it all” (HR, inventory management, customer relationship management, etc…)
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I tried Grocy for a while, but eventually stopped. Data entry was a huge pain.
Using the iOS companion app to scan grocery items into the app resulted in data issues that prevented me updating the item in the web app later. The only recourse was to add the items by hand in the web app, but then go in to each one separately with the mobile app to register the barcode. This also resulted in losing the additional metadata about the products that the mobile app would automatically configure if you onboarded the items through the mobile app, as it was able to look up additional data online and prefill a lot of stuff.
At the end of the day, it was too much of a hassle. I do like the idea, and may come back to Grocy again, but for now I have to pass.
Grocy looks really good; thanks for the recommendation. Do you know if it can generate meal plans based on what you have in stock and tell you what you need to get to make particular meals? It looks like they have a ‘desktop’ version for those who don’t want to host it on their server too.
If you need a computer to keep track of it, you have too much crap cluttering your life.
Lol, right, right.
Tell me again how to live my life?
I like being able to grab something from inventory rather than having to buy it again because I didn’t save it last time (for example, electronics components sometimes cost as much for one as it does to buy 10, or household hardware that only comes in multiples but I only need one for now).
Or the different tools for different seasons, like my gardening stuff that gets put away for winter - but before spring I need certain seeds and sprouting kits, but not everything. Being able to grab just the container of specific seeds, and just the container of one sprouting kit from storage is lots easier than grabbing a 50lb container with everything in it.
Or computer/electronics hardware. I have specific, inventoried containers for cables, adapters, components, etc, so if I need something I can check my inventory on my phone rather than “just order it from Amazon”, wasting money and resources.
Then there’s books, rather than keep them all on a bookshelf, they’re containerized (moisture-proof) and inventoried, when I want a specific one, I know exactly which container to get it from. And yes, there are certain books I find worth keeping around to re-read or when I’m looking for a specific bit of info.
Blankets, camping gear, household hardware (sockets, latches, door knobs, light bulbs, timers, extension cords, etc), exercise gear, seasonal clothes, 1all properly stowed and mostly inventoried.
Other seasonal stuff - cookware that’s used occasionally (crock pot, pressure cooker, roasting pan) are stowed and inventoried so I know exactly where they are, and I could even tell anyone exactly where to find them.
You may not see a value in this, but I’m not throwing away stuff that I know I’ll use occasionally. I’d rather have it stowed so my living space isn’t cluttered but it’s still reasonably accessible.
Plus the inventory is useful for insurance purposes - I don’t worry about being able to file insurance claims, as I have both a “written” inventory and pictures of everything (all properly stored and backed up).
People who own a lot always say what you say. It’s your life, so don’t apologize, but since you went into attack mode, here are some reasons you are (partly) wrong.
The post was about tracking everything. That’s obviously stressful, thus the post. Owning less is a great solution for some people for some items.
Owning things you occasionally use sounds like good financial sense. No need to rent. But owning them itself costs money. For storage. For shelving. For moving costs. And it takes time, when you need to search through your junk to find it again. Or you can’t, so you buy a new one, and now you have two. Have you done the math on each item you own? Are you actually saving anything? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
it’s not so much needing a computer as I’m trying to transition myself into newer and hopefully more efficient systems of data entry and cataloging. I’ve definitely had to take time to find a notebook I’ve misplaced and I type a lot faster than I write so it just makes sense. Looking at what has a certain type of memory I can pull from something not being used anymore is helpful and just fun in my opinion for brainstorming configurations. The past couple of years I’ve received a bunch of new stuff I need to figure out what I’m doing with it so time to streamline it all.
How about just a text file, or org mode (org-mode.org).
I think this is a good question for a therapist. I mean no disrespect. Feeling the need to label shelves with the things on them sounds like a compulsion. As does oscillating between hoarding and purging and several other things you said. A therapist can help you manage these desires and keep you out of the rabbit holes.
Holy crud, that’s a new hot take. Changes that occur over decades and because of different living conditions doesn’t account to “oscillating” if you actually read my comments. Also, you’ve apparently never lived with multiple people and a large pantry, this is just basic organization like a linen closet your grandparents had. You didn’t have to label them in the past because usually a singular person was in charge of placing everything (never heard of the husband trope that can’t find anything?).
The difference between what I would “imagine” a good organizational setup to be versus what I’m willing to actually do is a huge gap. If you had any clue about my actual life the compulsion comment would be rather hilarious. I would suggest not looking at a few internet comments and immediately telling someone to seek therapy with an arm-chair diagnosis you’ve deemed responsible, that in itself seems like an unhealthy disorder.
What in the OCD is this? /s
No, but seriously, I use only a spreadsheet for the things I need to track. Is there a proper small scale database solution?
Is there a proper small scale database solution?
Spreadsheets in the office suite of your choice
Most people don’t do that. They just have general places to keep track of important things. Most people are far less organised than you.
Some people on here are saying you come across as mentally ill in some way, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I would hope you naturally find some sense of joy or fulfillment in keeping track of different types of databases for minor practical benefits. I’m no psychologist though.
sometimes organizing things is a hobby and can ease stress. in your full control and helps calm the mind. not for everyone of course, but I don’t think it’s an illness either.
The only thing I have inventoried is what’s in the attic. Everything is in large plastic totes by category. I keep a text file listing each tote and what’s in each. You looking for something specific? Search for that word in the text file and then go open up tote F3.
The totes are color coded based on what category of item is in them & have their contents written on the lids using a chalkboard marker for anyone in the family who doesn’t want to use the text file.
Personally I’ve been trending the opposite direction: getting rid of things. We had our first kid about 7 years ago, which has seriously decreased my time for tinkering. I didn’t realize it at first, so I kept on picking up projects that interested me, got some pieces for them, organized them, and… they’re still there years later. The worst a somewhat sentimental things, that don’t really see much use, and are also projects. For example, I bought the boom box of my youth. It’s from the 80s (it wasn’t new when I had it 25 years ago) and needs some TCL - potentiometers cleaned up, some loose connections run down, etc. It’s low on my list of things to fix because it doesn’t actually sound that great and cant compete with my Bluetooth speaker.
I was at your stage a little over 10 years ago, renting and moving, kids slowly getting more things. Now they’re starting to move out and I’ve purchased a larger run down house that needs to be filled up. There’s some things I regret getting rid of like materials but for the most part I’m happy I don’t have so much to keep track of at the moment. The projects I’ve shelved for some many years are starting to get dusted off again and I’m finally getting back into hobbies and tinkering again. Definitely a good observation on the bluetooth speaker, there’s some things it’s just not worth putting the effort into unless it’s a niche need like a portable cassette player etc. I’m hoping you experience the same thing and get some of that time back in your future to do what you want.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I am holding on to some things in hopes of being able to do with the kids when they’re older, but it has been pretty liberating getting rid of some of this stuff.
I limit myself to what is known as a Field Replaceable Unit (FRU)
I don’t need to know the chips on the circuit board as I am not skilled enough to replace them.
I have tracked the model and part number of each of mine and my wifes PC parts but honestly, if my 3070 throws a wobbly, i am not going to start swapping memory units or capacitors on it.
Spreadsheets are for math. You want a database, specifically an asset management database. Snipe-it for example.
Meh, spreadsheets are for whatever you use them for. I use them for a lighter version of project management, where I don’t need all the rules of a project management app because they get in the way.
Thank you for the common sense response, it hadn’t clicked but I think this was my problem. The format of the spreadsheet and trying to make it work for my purposes just made me stop everytime I attempted it. This identified my problem I believe and now I can look into other options. As other’s have said, I probably could get it to work for my purposes but learning and understanding all the tools with the program just isn’t worth it for this one singular reason.
What? Nope, nothing like that here. Inventory? Like in games?
I’ve got a Shulker farm, so I’m set for space. The trouble is that even after recursively duplicating trillions upon trillions of pens, I still can’t ever find one when I actually need it.
I don’t have such an inventory, but I’d definitely use Notion like I do for everything else (basically)
I get rid of what I don’t want or haven’t used in years. No need to track anything.
