Apps for taking inventory at home

Let’s start with the software I liked least: home inventory apps for the iPhone and iPad. The first app,a $4.99 iPhone program called Home Inventory,made by Gotta Have It Software,was buggy. I tried to type in descriptions of my items,but the app crashed several times. When I loaded it back up,it sometimes forgot some stuff I had already entered. An app that loses track of your home inventory isn’t a very good way to keep track of your home inventory.

Two other $4.99 apps — My Stuff,by Rick Maddy,a programmer,for the iPhone,and the Itemizer by Digital2Analog Software,for the iPad — were more reliable. Still,I found each a pain to use. To enter a new item into My Stuff,you tap on a location or category (say,Living Room,or Electronics) and then type in the object’s details.

The Itemizer process is similar. But this is easier said than done. Typing in the make,model,price and other data for all your goods would be a hassle on a regular keyboard. On a touch screen,it is maddening.

Better,I thought,to stick with home inventory software for full-size PCs.Which brings us to Collectify Home Inventory,a $50 program for Windows that you can download and try out for 30 days without obligation. Collectify does many things right. It has an intuitive interface and a straightforward way to input your items. After listing all the rooms in your house,you add details of each object by room. Collectify offers several ways of doing this. The quickest is to photograph everything in the room and upload the pictures intoCollectify.

Now comes the hard part. You click on a photo,then type in a barrageof details (if you can find or remember them): How much did you pay for that couch? What’s the model number of your TV? Setting up your inventory on Collectify is a weeks-long process,and consequently may be best just for a few large or expensive items. Don’t expect to catalog hundreds of DVDs this way. Two Mac programs I tried offer roughly the same features as Collectify,and both are much cheaper and better designed. The first,a $10 program called Compartments by LittleFin Software,has a nice feature called WarrantyGuard that tracks your items’ warranty expiration dates so that,if something goes wrong,you can quickly learn if you are still covered.

The second Mac program I liked was Home Inventory,by Binary

Formations,which is $15. (Confusingly,Home Inventory for the Mac is not related to Home Inventory for the iPhone.) I found this program as quick and as easy to use as Compartments,but Home Inventory has a plus: it offers a companion “remote” that lets you take pictures and add details of your stuff with your iPhone.

But there’s that problem again: you must add all the item details manually. I kept wondering why I had to perform this chore. After all,many items in my house — my DVDs,my electronics,my kitchen gadgets — are sold online,which means that many of their details are sitting in a database somewhere. Wouldn’t it be great if a home inventory program could somehow look up all these facts online?

That’s the magic of Delicious Library 2,a $25 Mac program that I found to be the best of the home inventory managers I tested. What makes Delicious Library so delicious is automation. Instead of asking you to type in,say,a book’s title,author and other details,you simply point your computer’s camera at the book’s bar code. Delicious Library scans the bar code,looks up all the product details online and adds the object to your inventory.

Wil Shipley,the founder of Delicious Monster,the company that makes the software,notes that most goods you buy these days include bar codes: tools,electronics,clothes,toys,kitchen gadgets. I found Delicious Library phenomenally good at recognizing items across a wide range of categories. It was able to correctly identify virtually any CD or DVD I chose,almost every baby toy,many tools and even some of the groceries.

Two caveats: Many products have the bar code on the package,not the product,so it will be difficult to scan your TV unless you still have the box. If you don’t,you will have to enter the details manually,as with the other software I tried. But DVDs,books and CDs — the often-numerous items that are major offenders in cluttered households — usually come stamped with a code. I found the program’s camera-based scanner to be good,doing its work quickly. For faster scanning,you can buy a bar code scanner for your computer. Delicious Monster sells an add-on wireless scanner for $215,but less sophisticated ones are available at online retailers for as little as $30.