How My Asset Catalog Started With a Spreadsheet That Wasn’t Going to Work

A while back, my dad mentioned that he wanted to catalog one of his collections with pictures “on a spreadsheet.”

Now, I love a good spreadsheet. I really do. Spreadsheets have their place. They are great for rows, columns, totals, sorting, and pretending you’re more organized than you really are.

But cataloging a real collection that way?

Photos, notes, values, serial numbers, purchase details, locations, receipts, condition, who should know about it, where something is stored, what matters about it, how they are connected…

Yeah. That spreadsheet was going to get ugly fast.

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became. The problem was not that he needed a spreadsheet, he needed a way to build a real catalog. Privacy was paramount.

Something simple enough to actually use, but detailed enough to matter later.

That was one of those little “ah ha” moments that tends to happen while building something else.

I had already been deep into building My Account Map, which is made to help people document how their important accounts, services, emails, phones, passwords, and recovery paths connect. It is not a password manager. It is more like a dependency map for real life.

While working on that, Dad’s spreadsheet idea kept bouncing around in my head because the same basic problem existed.

People own stuff. Important stuff. Expensive stuff. Sentimental stuff. Tools, collections, equipment, vehicles, electronics, documents, firearms, trailers, storage units, business assets, family heirlooms, and all kinds of things that would be difficult to explain later if nobody knew what existed or where it was.

And most of us think we will remember. Spoiler alert: we will not.

Or worse, we assume somebody else will know. They probably will not.

That is where My Asset Catalog came from.

My Asset Catalog is a private, local-first way to document what you own. It lets you create assets, add photos, notes, values, serial numbers, purchase information, locations, PDFs, documents, and the kind of little details that matter when something is lost, stolen, damaged, inherited, stored away, or needed by someone else.

It is not cloud-based inventory software. It is not some subscription app trying to own your data. It is not designed to turn your private life into a database for somebody else’s server and profit or datamining.

Your catalog stays yours, wherever you choose to have it.

The main catalog lives local in your browser on your device while editing. You can save a backup file that opens offline as a viewable HTML file. That means you can put a copy on a USB drive, store it in a safe, print important cover sheets, or keep a backup wherever it makes sense for your situation.

No cloud required. No Big Tech company you need to trust (that will likely at some point end up with a data breach.) No subscription required.

That part matters to me.

I do not like the idea of private household, family, business, collection, firearm, tool, or estate information being casually tossed into another online account just because “that’s how apps work now.”

Sometimes the old way is still the right idea: keep your important records where you control them. Technically, you could store a catalog on an old floppy disk if you really want to party like it’s 1995. 🤓

But the old way can be improved.

Instead of a notebook in a drawer, a messy folder of receipts, a spreadsheet that nobody wants to maintain, or a bunch of photos buried somewhere on a phone, My Asset Catalog gives you a structured way to organize the details.

You can document a lawn mower, a coin collection, a trailer full of tools, the contents of a safe, equipment in a garage, business assets, or that one weird thing everybody in the family knows is valuable but nobody can explain.

And yes, Dad’s collection idea fits perfectly.

That was the funny part. The thing that started as “I might need a spreadsheet” became, “Nope, this needs its own system.”

That is usually how good tools are born.

Not from trying to make something flashy.

Not from trying to chase some trend.

But from a real person having a real problem and realizing the normal answer is not quite good enough.

A spreadsheet can list items, but that’s about it.

My Asset Catalog is meant to help tell the story of what those items are, where they are, what they are worth, what proof exists, and what somebody else may need to know later.

That could matter after a theft, a fire, during an insurance claim, when helping family settle an estate, when a business needs to keep moving, and when you simply want to stop relying on memory.

Because “I know where everything is” sounds good right up until life decides to test that theory.

My Asset Catalog is now live and a product of mine on its own domain, and it is one of those projects that feels both practical and personal to me.

It came out of building another product and out of my dad asking for something simple a long time ago. It came out of realizing that people need better ways to document the stuff that matters without giving up control of their information.

So, Dad, I guess you were right.

You did need a catalog, just not on a spreadsheet.