Notion Home Inventory

My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a property in the mountains that we’ll use to get away to over weekends, to host friends at, and sometimes to work remote from.

Since it won’t be a primary residence and we want to keep it rather lean to start, I’ve created a Notion database which we’ll use to keep track of inventory for consumable items. Each tracked item will have a safety stock quantity and some metadata.

The main idea is to serve as a reference for us when we’re on the drive up and stopping by the Walmart Supercenter that’s on the way. If we can dash in with a single list of “here are all the items that we’re low on” there’s a higher likelihood that the stop actually happens and that we don’t get distracted or purchase duplicates.

Part of the startup or shutdown procedure will be to take a quick inventory (and to record items that come off the shelf at point of consumption) so that we have an accurate stock list. I’m aiming for this to be a startup procedure since it’s likely that either:

• one of us will be up there before the other, the trailing person can then stop by the store on the way, only leaving the first person with low stock for a little bit
• we’ll be less inclined to do things during the shutdown procedure so it should likely be as short as possible
• a reward for performing the startup procedure should be not having to go to the store

Since the property is in the mountains, running to the store is not as easy as in town. We’re not often needing to randomly pick things up but nor do we plan our trips to the store days in advance. If we have a system that’s telling us what we need to get when, that’s even less we have to worry about on the way up to relaxing.

The basic structure is a Notion database with:

1. Individual items that have metadata like
   1. On Hand - The number of units we have sitting in the closet like they would on a store’s shelves
   2. Safety Stock Quantity - The number of units that we should have sitting in the closet like they would on a store’s shelves
   3. Walmartable - Is the item purchasable from Walmart or does it need to be purchased from somewhere else - like the feed store or cafe
   4. Tags - Tags represent the different areas and attributes. One tag marks if the item is more important if we have guests coming.
2. Multiple Views for quick filtering
   1. ”All Items” view sorted by tags to make inventory easier
   2. ”Walmart Stop” view for quick access of items that we should get from Walmart
   3. ”Pick Up On The Way!” view for quick access to items to buy regardless of their retail source
   4. ”Guests Coming” view for only the items that are below threshold and tagged as necessary for guests, these would be high priority to stop for

I looked at tools like Grocy which are full functionality ERPs for the home but I figure we can start with a glorified shopping list and then expand from there.

I think this system should work to get us started but I’m interested to see how we can further automate the system and how we’d incorporate perishable foods or stock demand between the house and the mountains; imagine if we marked a need for an item in the mountains but we fulfilled it from our home stock!