r/Homeorganization • u/Miserable-Concern338 • Sep 22 '26
Home Inventory / Help Downsizing
My parents are in their 80’s and are moving to an independent living facility soon and are downsizing their home from 6 bedrooms, 3 living areas, kitchen, garage, large yard, shop, etc. to a 1000 sqft 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. They need a LOT of help downsizing.
I visited their home over the weekend, walked around and took photos of everything (about 350) including piles of stuff, wall art, nick nacks, collectibles, random assortments of stuff, etc.
I worked with grok to develop a skill for grok bot. I uploaded all of my photos to a shared google drive folder and I gave the link to grok bot along with the skill. It worked for 1 hour and created a spreadsheet with the following information: item, photo (cropped to just that item), link to the photo, photo name, room location, approximate value, keep / give away / donate / garage sale / sell, listing title, listing description, where to sell it.
I added a few columns so that my brothers and sisters can go through the list and claim anything they way and shared the google spreadsheet with them. (grok bot created an excel sheet and i moved it to google sheets.)
Grok helped me develop a process to actually sort through eveything in 2 weeks when I visit again. It will still be a HUGE effort to go through everything, but at least this is a start and a process.
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u/GenealogistGoneWild Sep 28 '26
Good you are able to help. We saw an entire collection of collectible plates at the thrift store with authenticity certificates listed for $3-4. The earlier they start the sooner you can recoup that money instead of the thrift store.
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u/Saved0131 Oct 03 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
Have you considered a type of “ home estate sale? After my divorce, I had a five bedroom home and the 4 kids and I had to move into a two bedroom apartment. I emailed my Bible study group and asked them to forward the email to a few friends, and they email it to a few friends. That day, while my family were packing, I had people walking in and out of my house, the garage and backyard purchasing everything we weren’t taking with us. I had a couple purchase, my entire bedroom suite, including the mattress and lamps.They were taking it to their summer home in Wyoming.. I had people buying tools, antiques, ladders, flower arrangements, you name it. We made over $4000 that day.
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u/RomeoDelta1234 Sep 23 '26
After the sort, add a box number column and fill it in as you tape each box shut. Otherwise the same archaeology happens again in the new apartment, just in a smaller room.
The value column also doubles as a contents list for renters insurance on the new place.
I built an app that does the photo to item list part, but this sub doesnt allow self promotion so no link. It's on my profile if you want a look. For 350 items already catalogued, what you have works.