Print QR Labels for Your Boxes: Scan a Box, See What's Inside

The garage has twelve boxes in it. They are all the same brown. They were all sealed by a version of me who was certain he'd remember what went in each one. He did not.

So I do the thing everyone does: I cut the tape on the nearest box, find books, re-tape it, cut the next one. Three boxes in, I find the winter coats. I have now opened and resealed three boxes to answer a question a label should have answered.

QR labels are the fix. You print a small code, stick it on the box, and from then on the box answers for itself. Point your phone at it, and the full contents list — the one you already built in AllKeep — opens on your screen.

What the label actually is

Each box in AllKeep has its own page: a name, a photo or two, and the list of what's inside. The QR label is just a printable shortcut to that page.

You open a box record, hit print, and AllKeep lays the code out on a sheet you can run through any home printer. Stick it on the box. Scan it later with the camera in the AllKeep app, and you land on that box — not a login screen, not a search box, the actual box, with its actual contents.

The label doesn't store the list. It points at it. So when you add three more things to the box next month, the same label still shows the current contents. Nothing to reprint.

A sheet at a time

The print layout is built for a full sheet of labels, the kind you buy in a stationery shop. Lay out a stack of boxes, print one sheet, peel and stick down the line.

A few things I've learned doing this for real:

• Put the label on the top and one side. You can never predict how a box gets stacked, and a label facing the wall is a label you'll never scan.
• Stick it where the tape isn't. A label under packing tape scans through the plastic fine; a label you tape over twice starts to glare under the garage light.
• Number the boxes anyway. The QR code is the smart part, but a big handwritten "7" lets a human across the room tell two boxes apart without a phone.

It's not only for boxes

The same code works on anything that has a record in AllKeep — and locations have records too.

Print one for the storage shelf, the closet, the chest of drawers in the spare room. Scan the shelf and you see every box on it. This is the part that surprised me: I stopped scanning individual boxes and started scanning the shelf, because nine times out of ten the question is "which of these holds X", and the shelf answers it in one tap.

If you've read why locations need to nest, this is that idea made physical. The drawer is in the cabinet is in the room, and now each layer has a code you can point a camera at.

Where it falls down

Honest limits, because there always are some:

• A label needs a record first. The QR code is useless on a box you never logged. You still have to put the contents into AllKeep once; the label just saves you opening it forever after.
• Faded prints. A cheap inkjet label left in a sunny window for a year will fade. For long-term storage, laser print or cover the label with a strip of clear tape.
• No phone, no scan. This is a phone-and-app system. If the person opening the box years from now isn't an AllKeep user, the handwritten number and a shared box are what save them — not the code.

Try it on one shelf

Don't label the whole garage tonight. Pick one shelf, or one stack of boxes you can't currently tell apart.

Log what's in two or three of them, print the labels, stick them on, and scan one back. The first time a box opens its own contents on your screen instead of making you reach for a box cutter, you'll label the rest of the garage on your own.

Install Inventory by AllKeep on Google Play, open a box, and print its label. Free on Android.