The 5-minute quick start

GearCache holds three kinds of thing: items you own, locations where they live, and checklists for trips. All of it sits on your device — no setup, no waiting for anything to load. This guide walks you from a clean install to a working setup in about five minutes.

1. Add your first location#

Locations are where stuff actually lives — usually a tree that mirrors reality. Open the Locations tab and tap Add location. Name your top-level container — most people start with Trailer, Garage, or Car — then save.

Tap your new location to drill in, then Add location again to nest something inside. A useful starter shape:

Trailer
├── Kitchen drawer
├── Roof rack
└── Driver-side canopy

Don’t sweat the structure now. You can rename, reorder, or move locations later, and items follow.

2. Add your first item#

Items are anything you’d put on a packing list, plus everything that already lives somewhere. Open the Inventory tab and tap Add item.

Fill in:

• Name — what you call it day to day. Camp stove, First aid kit, Gas canister.
• Category — pick from the suggestions or create your own. Keep it broad: Kitchen, Shelter, Tools.
• Location — pick the spot you just made. If it’s already in the trailer, tell GearCache.
• Condition — good, fair, needs maintenance, needs replacement, expired, or consumed.
• Photo (optional) — tap the camera and snap a quick picture. Helpful when you’re rummaging in a dim canopy at 5am.

Save. Your first item is in.

3. Add a few more items#

Resist the urge to organise perfectly. Just keep adding what’s around you — five minutes of breadth-first item entry beats thirty minutes of category bikeshedding. Aim for ten or so things across two or three locations before moving on.

You can always come back and tighten things up. Tags (next to category in the item form) are great for cross-cutting labels like essential, fragile, or weekend-only once you have a feel for what you actually have.

4. Make a trip checklist#

Checklists are how GearCache pays you back for the inventory work. Open the Checklists tab and tap New checklist.

Give it a name — Easter camping trip or whatever — and a departure date if you know it. Then comes the important step: destination locations. These are the places where items “count as already packed.” If you set the trailer as a destination, anything currently stored in the trailer is auto-checked when you add it to the list.

Tap Add items, browse by category or search, and pull in the things you’ll need. As you tap each one, GearCache flags whether it’s already at the destination or still needs to be loaded.

5. Smart packing in action#

Your checklist now shows two stacks: Already packed (auto-checked because they’re at the destination) and Still to pack (the actual to-do list).

The “Still to pack” list is what you act on. Check items off as you load them. When you’re done — or when you mark the checklist complete — GearCache asks if you want to update the locations of the things you just packed. Confirm, and your inventory stays accurate without any manual tracking.

That’s the full loop, end to end, in well under five minutes of typing.

What to learn next#

The rest of the help library digs into specific corners of the app:

• Adding & managing items — every field, what each condition means, how search works.
• Locations & hierarchy — building a tree that matches your real-world setup.
• Checklists & smart packing — destination locations, item dependencies, post-trip review.

Or jump straight to the FAQ for the most common questions.