What is it?

bring.order2chaos is a home inventory app I built for my father to keep track of his thousands of books and wine bottles. I then decided to just make it public, for anyone to use. The app runs as a responsive web app and as “native” mobile apps for iOS and Android.

• Landing page: https://landing.bring.order2chaos.app/
• Web app: https://bring.order2chaos.app/
• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bring-order2chaos/id6447082537
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.order2chaos.bring

How it works

The core model is built around inventories that contain nested locations (like Apartment → Kitchen → Pantry → Shelf), and items that live in those locations. If you move a shelf, everything on it moves with it – which mirrors how real spaces actually work.

flowchart TD
    INV["📦 Inventory"] --> APT["🏠 Apartment"]
    APT --> KIT["🍳 Kitchen"]
    APT --> BED["🛏️ Bedroom"]
    KIT --> PAN["Pantry"]
    KIT --> DRW["Drawer"]
    PAN --> SH1["Shelf 1"]
    PAN --> SH2["Shelf 2"]
    SH1 --- I1["Olive Oil"]
    SH1 --- I2["Rice"]
    SH2 --- I3["Canned Tomatoes"]

Key features:

• Nested locations to mirror real physical spaces
• Custom categories so you can track what matters to you (not just what I think matters)
• Barcode support for scanning existing codes or assigning your own
• Sharing so households can maintain an inventory together
• Fast search and filters to actually find things when you need them
• Data export for backup or insurance purposes (subscription feature)

Why I built it

I had tried a few existing inventory apps and they all felt either too clunky or too opinionated about how I should organize my stuff. Some forced hierarchies that didn’t match my mental model. Others required tedious data entry for every single field.

I wanted something that was flexible enough to handle how one actually organizes things (nested locations that can change) but simple enough that I’d actually use it. The barcode scanning was also crucial – manually typing in hundreds of items is a great way to never finish setting up an inventory system.

Imagery

Current state

Out of budgeting constraints, the app is currently not publicly available anymore, but I’m considering to re-activate it as it had a bunch of users.