If you’re like the average 21st century computer user, you have too much stuff. Not just computer stuff. Stuff stuff. Closets of stuff. Garages of stuff. Storage lockers of stuff.
How do you keep track of all that stuff? Yet another Mac utility to the rescue. MYStuff can track your home inventory (good for insurance purposes), and product warranties, and PDF documents. Even what you spend on your stuff.
The Problem With Stuff
I remember the movie The Accidental Tourist with a bunch of well known stars. William Hurt, Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, and Bill Pullman.
William Hurt’s family was so anal retentive that they put canned goods in kitchen cabinets alphabetically.
Yes, it was funny, but also sad. How much organization is too much?
MYStuff is that kind of utility. What it does is useful to anyone with too much stuff cluttering up your home. It gives you options to unclutter—not the physical stuff—but the knowledge of where everything is, what it costs, even how much you spent on it.
It’s Four Mints In One
It isn’t often you can find a single Mac utility that does more than one thing well. For example, having a lot of stuff—furniture, gadgets, books, jewelry, appliances, toys, bikes, cars, boats—can complicate life.
All that stuff has to be maintained, of course. MYStuff won’t do that. But, as a home inventory program, it can give you a quick list of what your stuff is, what it’s worth, and even where it is. In case of flood, fire, or theft, it would be nice to be able to whip out that inventory for your insurance agent.
Of course, if your Mac is stolen or damaged… And, speaking of the Mac, MYStuff, which runs on your Mac, also manages to store and track documents, files, and more—and makes them easier to manage, organize, and find.
Most of what we buy these days comes with a warranty of one kind or another. Since MYStuff already handles documents, it’s easy to add in warranty information, too. Receipts, claims, purchase date, amounts, even extended warranties. They all get collected in a single place on your Mac.
MYStuff does not track your money, but, since it tracks what you do with your money, there’s also an option to store how much you spent on those gadgets, diamonds, furs, trips to Paris, or another dirt bike.
Tracking Stuff Gone Wild
Back to the obsession with organizing that which probably doesn’t need to be organized so much. Putting canned goods on a shelf alphabetically probably shouldn’t be a family affair.
There’s a limit to how much organization is good for us—probably just enough to make us productive, but not bog us down with excessive time just to maintain stuff in a well organized manner.
MYStuff is about as easy as it can get to master.
Start with the basics. Car. Mac. TV. Kitchen. Gadgets. Click on each category and enter the name of your stuff, model, purchase date and price (click on each image for a larger, pop-up view).
To help identify each item, use your Mac or digital camera to take a photo, and place that within MYStuff. Your insurance company will love your for it (or not).
Frankly, I’m impressed that MYStuff does so much. Capture web site pages with product information and store it in MYStuff. Pull photos from iPhoto to use in whatever goods you’re stuffing into MYStuff. Even if you have a home, summer home, home office, or office, MYStuff can handle multiple locations, keeping everything neat and tidy and segregated.
Information stuffed into MYStuff can be valuable, so there’s a built-in backup system to move a copy of MYStuff’s stuff to another Mac, another hard drive, a flash drive, or CD.
I don’t need a utility that organizes my pantry using the Dewey Decimal Classification system, but it is nice to know what I’ve got, where it came from, what it’s worth.
As it is, my current organization system is age old—big and bulky on the bottom, smaller and less expensive on top, and very valuable in my top dresser drawer.
About Jeffrey Mincey
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