Locations & hierarchy

A location in GearCache is a physical place something can sit. The trailer’s kitchen drawer. The third shelf in the garage. The boot of the car. Locations are organised as a tree because that’s how real storage works.

Why hierarchical?#

“It’s in the trailer” is useful. “It’s in the trailer’s kitchen drawer” is much more useful. A flat list of locations forces you to choose one resolution — either you have one big bucket called Trailer and rummage, or you have a hundred sibling locations and lose them in a list.

A tree lets each item sit at the right level of detail. You don’t have to be precise everywhere; you can be specific where it matters and broad where it doesn’t.

Building the tree#

Open the Locations tab and tap Add location to create a top-level entry. Tap an existing location to drill in, then Add location again to nest something inside it. There’s no depth limit — go three or four levels deep if your trailer’s that organised.

Each location can have:

• A name (required)
• A description (optional, for “the one near the spare wheel” style notes)
• An icon (optional, for visual scanning)
• A position among its siblings (drag to reorder)

That’s all. Locations are deliberately thin — items carry the weight.

A worked example#

This is the structure most overlanders end up with, give or take a drawer:

Home
├── Garage
│   ├── Shelf 1
│   └── Camping box
└── Shed
Trailer
├── Kitchen drawer
├── Driver side canopy drawer
└── Roof rack
Car
├── Boot
└── Back seat storage

Three top-level locations (Home, Trailer, Car), each with a couple of meaningful children. Items move between branches as the trip evolves: gas canister starts in Home > Garage > Camping box, gets packed into Trailer > Kitchen drawer, comes back at the end.

Reordering and renaming#

Tap a location to edit its name, description, or icon. Drag a location among its siblings to reorder. To move a location to a different parent — say, promoting Camping box from Garage to a top-level location — open the location’s edit screen and pick a new parent.

When you move a location, every item inside it follows. Items don’t stick to a parent location — they belong wherever the location goes.

How locations connect to checklists#

Each trip checklist has one or more destination locations — the places where items “count as already packed.” If you set Trailer as a destination, every item currently stored anywhere under Trailer (kitchen drawer, canopy, roof rack) is auto-checked when you add it to the list.

That’s the payoff for tree-shaped locations. You set destinations at whatever level makes sense — the whole Trailer, or just Trailer > Kitchen drawer for a one-night trip — and GearCache handles the rest. See Checklists & smart packing for the full flow.

Suggested starting structure#

For first-time users with outdoor gear:

• Home — anywhere not on the road. Often broken into Garage, Shed, or Closet.
• Trailer / camper / van — the rolling storage you take with you.
• Car — the daily driver, useful even if you also have a trailer.

Three top-level locations is enough to start. Add nested children as you find yourself wanting more precision — there’s no penalty for keeping things broad early and tightening later.

What to learn next#

• Checklists & smart packing — destination locations in action.