How I Organize My Stash

I was telling someone that I use an app on my iPad to organize my stash and in taking screen shots I realized it would be easier to blog about it.

I use MyStuff2.  I originally got this because you could scan the barcodes, but I've found this doesn't always work.  For example, I was able to easily scan the Milani I just purchased, but the Revlon?  No dice.  But having spent the dough on it, I decided I was going to use it no matter what.

It took a bit to configure it the way I wanted it, but now that I have I love it.  I have this personality where if I can't get something to work, I'll just keep trying until I do.  This was one of those things where I was bound and determined and finally figured out how to get it like I wanted.

This is the main screen, so you can see I put all of my polishes into a "Category".  Under the category I set the display properties, what collection it belongs in and if I was better organized, I could put where I store it (i.e. 2nd drawer) under location, this is something I hope to get better at to make finding something easier!  Under notes I put in where I purchased it for remembering, although I've gotten more and more lax about that.  

Within Collection (or even overall) you can show a basic list of photos within.  For my photos I do a bottle shot for the untried and a picture of the mani for the trieds.  So at a glance, I can easily tell which ones I've used.

 You can also show a list of items.  I haven't quite figured out how to sort them in alpha order though.

To add a polish,  you click on the + symbol in the middle thing and it pops up "New Item" in the 3rd column.

Clicking on Category, I scrolled down to Milani (you have to enter in your own category)

I clicked on the bar code symbol and scanned it, it had a match so it offered me up a bottle shot.  So I took it, then I entered the name under Category Attributes.  Voila, added to stash.

For my Revlon, it didn't have a match, so I took my own photo by using this option (this is also how you'd add the mani pictures, take a screen shot with your device and then upload it, then you can delete the photo off of your photo log because this saves photos.

Here is the photo:

There is a way to transfer this onto my other devices (i.e. my iPhone) so I can have my list wherever I am.

 I've exported the data base and read it into excel, however I'm still playing with this, because it exports each thing out by category, so I need to combine all 86 files into one spreadsheet.  In other words - REALLY FREAKING ANNOYING.  See here for all of the CSV files.

There is also an option to put it straight into Google Docs in a PDF report, it isn't the greatest, but better than combining 86+ files every time you want a master list.  Here is an example:

without pics

with pics (which only look cruddy because I screwed up the aspect ratio)

So there you go.  Can you tell I'm a Virgo? 

Anyway, if you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact me at soyouthinkyoucanpaint@gmail.com

Thanks!
Shannon