Mrs. WeHaveCookies and I are moving across the state and into a house owned by a longtime friend. She recently inherited this house from her recently deceased father. He was a serious technophile/hoarder who spent a good portion of his life making things like high-end custom amplifiers out of his home.
The two-car garage is at least 80% filled to the gills with his stuff, ranging from high-end, barely-used, heavy-duty machinery (various drill presses, a 4’ wide press brake, air compressor, etc) to countless little plastic drawers filled with countless little technophile doodads.
There are lots shelves, and things do appear organized for the most part, but most of it is not labeled and just exactly what these things are (what they might be worth, etc) died with her father.
By my (very) rough estimate, she could potentially sell the contents of the garage for some sort of 5-figure amount of money. I also think that the size of that 5-figure sum is going to largely depend on how organized she is in taking an inventory and how prepared she will be when consulting with experts to estimate value and asking price. There are also various things that she wishes to gift to friends and barter with for services that she needs. She is a potter and artist who is in the middle of renovating her own house, pottery studio, kilns, etc.
My first idea was for her to buy some sort of barcode printer/scanner/management software system (that she could potentially put to ongoing use in her pottery business). My concern is that there are lots of very little things that she needs to inventory. When I used to work re-stocking medical supplies in a hospital, applying barcode stickers to tiny things like catheters and needles really pushed the limits of utility of such a system.
What sort of options are there for someone like my friend?