Using QR codes to identify and track your stuff

Anyone who's moved house knows what a horrid thing that could be. I'm currently outprocessing, which means lots of boxes and packing and other kinds of misery. One of my problems is this: how do you know where a particular item is? You haven't unpacked, but you desperately need Kissinger's Diplomacy. What do you do? Unpack all book boxes?

During last night, which I spent pretty sleepless, I invented a cute little method for resolving this issue, at least to an extent, using QR codes. Here's the general idea: you can encode up to 180 characters in a single QR block. That's enough for a rough description of what's in the box, so you won't start digging, to the great annoyance of the CinC of the Household, in the porcelain box when you're looking for a book on IR. It doesn't need to be a complete manifest, and if you truly want a complete manifest, you can always make a spreadsheet - I'll discuss that in a separate step. 

The best about this is that it's incredibly low-cost, and it allows you to make faster insurance claims if something is damaged, quick decisions when your house gets flooded (women, children and your priceless collection of Star Wars figurines first) and a good way to ID the content of boxes without having to flop around with brown tape.

There is a video version of the whole lark, which may be more illustrative than a verbal description. The downside is that it features my annoying head and voice. Click here for video version .

So - let's roll!

Step 1 Step 1: The Manifest

If you've seen cargo manifests, they're endless and terribly detailed. Yours should fit into 180 characters. So be concise. It's worthwhile to put three pieces of info in the manifest:
- what general kind of stuff is inside: books, household items, and so on,
- where particular things go, e.g. if a box is designated to go into the study because it contains all your books, then it should contain a reference to that,
- if there are particularly important items, mention them. So e.g. as you can see, I mentioned my Wacom as a particular item, because I may need it before unpacking.

Think of the manifest as the dog tag of the box. Consider the brevity of a dog tag - name, serial, service, blood type, faith. It focuses on what's necessary to know on a battlefield. Think like writing a dog tag. Brevity is cool.

If you see the attached image, I left the QR code speak. I have a box identification system that consists of a class letter and three numbers, which are sequential and which are also in the sequence the goods would be packed into a lorry. Tricky, but not impossible!