How to set up a home inventory in an afternoon: one photo per wall

People start a home inventory with the things: the drill, the passport, the spare charger. Twenty minutes later they are typing "Kitchen, left cupboard, second shelf" for the fourth time, and that is where most inventories stop. The things were never the hard part. The places were.

Turn it around. Set up the places first, quickly and all at once, and adding things later becomes a matter of seconds, because every thing already has somewhere to go.

Why the places are the hard part

A thing needs one name. A place needs a name that tells it apart from every other place, and a position in a hierarchy: this drawer, in that cabinet, in the garage. Typing that for every shelf in a house is slow, repetitive and easy to get inconsistent, so "top shelf" in one room becomes "shelf 1" in the next and search stops finding either.

The method: one photo per wall of storage

1. Walk the house room by room

Start where the most things live and the least order exists. For most homes that is the garage, the hallway cupboard and the kitchen. Leave the rooms with little storage for last.

2. Photograph each wall that stores things

Stand back far enough to get every shelf, cabinet and box on that wall in one frame. One photo per wall, not per shelf. Good light helps more than a good phone: open the garage door, turn on the cupboard light.

3. Name each spot by what tells it apart

Look at the photo and give every storage spot a name you would use out loud: "Blue box", "Left drawer unit", "Top shelf". Colour and position beat numbers here, because you will recognise them standing in the room.

4. Split the units that have parts

A cabinet with four drawers is four places, not one. Name them "Drawer 1" to "Drawer 4" from the top, so you can file the tape measure in Drawer 2 instead of "somewhere in the cabinet".

The garage is not one place. It is a shelf unit, a drawer cabinet and three clear bins.

Then add the things where they already are

With the places set up, filling them is quick. Open a drawer, photograph what is in it, give the photo to the drawer. You are not reorganising anything on the first pass: record what is where today. Reorganising comes later, once you can see what you actually own.

• Do one wall at a time. A finished wall is useful immediately; a half-finished house is not.
• Skip the obvious. Nobody needs to record where the plates are. Record what you look for.
• Favour what gets lost: cables, chargers, documents, tools, spare keys, seasonal things.

Keep the photos

The photo of the wall is worth keeping next to the places you made from it. It shows how things were arranged, it makes each spot easy to recognise in a list, and if you ever need it for insurance, it is a dated picture of what was there.

The short version

Set up the places before the things. Photograph each wall of storage, name every spot by colour or position, and split cabinets into their drawers and shelves. Then fill one wall at a time with what is already there, starting with what you tend to lose, and keep the wall photos.