I’m not a real estate consultant, but I’m a strong advocate of building detached garages. I keep highlighting their benefits to everyone in my friend circle and family.
The single biggest reason I discourage building attached garages is that a garage eventually becomes more than just a convenient place to park your vehicle.
It can quickly become a dumping ground for items you don’t keep near your home for safety reasons.
My detached garage contains a mix of hazardous materials and miscellaneous items, so my concern is more about decluttering than about safety.
Since the day I built it, it has become messier to the point where doing it myself without digital tools was no longer a smart idea.
The realization was why I finally tried a home inventory app on my Android phone.
I used the Find my stuff: Home inventory app to organize my messy garage, and I was blown away by how it helped me dig up things I forgot I owned.
How I used the Find my stuff app to organize my garage
The idea of a home inventory app is interesting, but that alone doesn’t make a strong case for recommending the Find my stuff to garage owners.
Find my stuff is my go-to inventory app because it ticks all the right boxes.
After installing the app and going through a few steps during the setup, the first thing I did was create containers in the app.
I own a medium-sized garage, and creating 20 such containers was enough for me.
Previously, I knew some items were somewhere in the garage, but I couldn’t remember their exact locations. The Container feature is designed to help you in this type of situation.
My garage has numerous shelves, so I created one container in the Find my stuff app for each. The next step was to add items to those containers.
I grouped similar items in one container instead of putting random things in. This makes the physical garage and the Find my stuff app more organized.
This way, you’ll never forget where an item is in your garage.
You can also create a container within a container in the Find my stuff app. I created a handful of nested containers, but I took photos of every item I added to a specific container to find them faster.
After adding an item, I get an edit option, allowing me to type a short description, quantity, price, tags, purchase date, warranty expiration, receipt photo, bar code, and more.
In addition to taking photos, I always mention the number of each item when adding something to the list.
Although I didn’t need to use it, Find my stuff offers a handy feature that lets you export all the items in a container.
These features are already good enough for me to organize my garage, but if you need more advanced features, the app has you covered.
However, you’ll have to pay to use them. You can either pay a one-time fee of $14.99 to get access to all those pro capabilities, or pay for an individual premium capability, costing $3.99 each.
Find my stuff did something more than organize my garage
Had I not tried the Find my stuff app, I’d never have been able to organize my messy garage the way I wanted.
The results were undoubtedly satisfying. My garage finally became a decent one with ample space to park my vehicle.
While it took some time to catalog everything in the garage, at no point did it feel boring. On the contrary, it was more fun, as I rediscovered plenty of handy tools I forgot I owned.
The rediscovery prevented me from buying duplicates. I’m also certain the Android app will reduce the chances of buying duplicates in the future.
The next time I need something, I’ll first open the Find my stuff app and check whether I already own the item.
I found three duplicates while cataloging, so there was a good chance that I would’ve made the same mistake had I not used the inventory management app.
In addition to helping me organize my garage, Find my stuff saves me money, which I can spend on buying one of the advanced features if I ever need one.
I’ll never go back to organizing my garage without an inventory app
Now that I’ve started using Find my stuff, I can’t imagine trying to put my garage in order all by myself without an inventory app.
It’s only been a few days since I started using Find my stuff, so I don’t think I’ll remain a loyalist to the app without trying out its alternatives.
I’m sticking to Find my stuff for now, but I’m keen on trying some of its open source alternatives that I can self-host on my private server, like I recently did with Joplin.
