Boxes: Moving Inventory Labels

Boxes is for the three weeks after the van leaves, when you need the kettle and

there are forty identical brown cubes in front of you.

List what went in each box. Print a sheet of labels. Stick one on each box. Later,

scan a label — or just search for the thing you are looking for.

WHICH BOX IS THE KETTLE IN

Type kettle. The answer is a box number, a room and a destination. Search looks

through everything you listed, plus rooms, destinations and box numbers, and puts

the box holding the thing you actually named at the top — so a search for pan

finds the pan before it finds the saucepan, the pancake tin and the pantry.

PRINTABLE LABELS, EIGHT TO A PAGE

A real PDF, made on your phone, with cut lines. A4 or Letter. Each label carries

a big QR code, the box number in large type, the room, where the box is going,

and as much of the contents as fits — so you can read a label without a phone at

all.

Save it, print it, or send it to yourself. There is no charge and no watermark.

THE QR CODE CARRIES THE BOX, NOT A LIST

This is the decision the whole app is built on, and it is worth a paragraph.

The code on a label is a short permanent code for that box — not a web link, and

not a copy of the contents. That means three things:

• It works with no signal. A storage unit is a concrete room, and a QR pointing

at a website is useless in one.

• The label never goes stale. Add something to the box next week and the label is

still right, because it never claimed to know what was inside.

• The code stays small, so the printed square is big and chunky and scans from

across a room, at an angle, in bad light. A code holding thirty items would be

four times as dense in the same space.

NO CAMERA PERMISSION

Scanning uses Google Play services' own scanner, which runs in its own process.

Install this app and look at its permissions: there is no camera in the list.

There is no camera in the app at all.

If the scanner is not available on your phone — it is a Play services component

and it can be missing — every label also has its code printed underneath in plain

text, and you can type it instead. It does exactly the same thing.

LABEL FIRST, PACK SECOND

Add eight empty boxes at once, print their labels, and stick them on before you

start. Fill in what went inside as you go. That is how packing actually happens.

FOUR STATES, AND YOU WILL USE ALL OF THEM

Packing, Sealed, Arrived, Unpacked. Filter by any of them. The satisfying one is

watching Unpacked go up.

EVERYTHING STAYS ON YOUR PHONE

No account. No sign-up. No server. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is shared with a

removal company, and there is no link to send anybody. Android cloud backup is

switched off as well, so an inventory of your home does not end up in a Google

Drive you forgot about.

Uninstalling the app deletes everything, including the codes your labels point

at. Save a copy first: the export is one file with every box, its contents and

its code, and restoring it on a new phone makes every sticker work again.

WHAT IT IS NOT

It is not an insurance inventory. There is nowhere to record what something is

worth, no photos and no receipts. This app finds things.

It is not a shared move. Two people packing one house is a real thing and this

app does not do it, because doing it would mean uploading a list of everything

you own.

Three permissions, and all three are for the ads that keep it free.