The Inventory Your Family Will Need If You're Not There to Explain It
Not morbid — practical. If you were unreachable for a month, could anyone find the insurance papers, the spare keys, the account list? Here's the inventory that answers that.
Thoughts on software development, building products, and life in Japan
Not morbid — practical. If you were unreachable for a month, could anyone find the insurance papers, the spare keys, the account list? Here's the inventory that answers that.
You own the book, the drill, the camping tent — technically. Someone borrowed each one and you no longer remember who. Here's how to stop gifting your things by accident.
You pay to move every box twice — once in effort, once on the invoice. Here's how to inventory, decide, and sell the dead weight before moving day instead of hauling it across town.
The go-bag you packed in 2023 is full of expired water and dead batteries you'll find at the worst possible moment. Log it once, get reminded before it lapses.
The fastest way to abandon an inventory is to try to log every fork. The line between worth-the-tap and waste-of-time is the whole skill. Here's where I draw it.
The dishwasher dies at month 13, the warranty was 24 months, and the receipt faded to a blank strip two summers ago. Here's a system for warranties that's still there when you need it.
Twelve identical brown boxes, no idea which holds the winter coats. Print a QR label per box, scan it with your phone, and the contents list opens. No cutting tape to check.
Plain-language search across your own inventory. Type 'where's my passport', get the room, the cabinet, the shelf. Built for the morning you can't think.
Real things live inside other things — drawer inside cabinet inside kitchen. Flat 'room' tags lose the chain. Here's why nested locations matter.
Encircle is pivoting to restoration contractors in 2026. If you catalogued your home there, here's a calm three-step plan for the migration.
Items, boxes, sharing, search — free, permanently. $7.99/mo or $79.99/yr unlocks unlimited photo-naming and the Ask feature. Here's why.
Marc blocked a Saturday, downloaded four home-inventory apps, and tried each one on the same shelf. Sortly, Encircle, HomeZada, AllKeep — what happened.
Why your city flat, your parents' garage, and the Airbnb you rent out cannot live in the same list — and what we do about it in AllKeep.
The junk drawer in one photo. Lay nine things on a cutting board, snap once, and AllKeep names and tags each one before you finish the pile.
Filing a claim without photos and receipts is filing a wishlist. Here's what adjusters keep asking for, and how to have it ready before they do.
Other inventory apps send a share link and leave you wondering. AllKeep tells you who accepted, who's pending, who declined — so the household actually knows.
A boring, practical, actually-works system for packing, labeling, and unpacking a move — built from three international moves and one expensive kitchen-utensils incident.
Big update to Japan Life Hub — we expanded coverage from 14 to 78 cities, refreshed every 2026 data point (tax, rent, initial costs, monthly budgets), and unified the map across our tools.
A year on the web, now in your pocket. What shipped on Android, what's deliberately missing, and why Android came before iOS.
Step-by-step guide to building and publishing a Chrome extension using React 18, TypeScript, Vite, and Manifest V3.
New tools for Japan Life Hub — accurate 2025 tax calculator with Year 1 vs Year 2 comparison, and comprehensive apartment rental guide in 4 languages.
After months of research and development, we're launching Japan Life Hub — a free toolkit for expats and anyone planning to move to Japan.
We built a free Chrome extension that helps freelance developers calculate their market rate based on tech stack, experience, and location.