How to catalog a parent's collection before the family divides it

The single most useful rule is that nothing leaves the house until it has been cataloged. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because the sibling who is there on Saturday will naturally pick up the thing they love, and the sibling who is not will hear about it afterward. A catalog that comes first makes every choice visible to everyone, including the one who could not get on a plane.

Say this out loud to the family at the start, and say it kindly. It protects the person doing the work as much as anyone. If a parent is still living and wants to give something to someone now, that is their choice to make, and it goes into the catalog too, marked as given.

The photo is what the siblings who are not there will actually decide from, so it is worth ten seconds each.

1. Use a plain background: a sheet of white card, a pale tablecloth, a clean wall. Patterned carpet and a crowded shelf make small objects hard to read.
2. Use daylight from a window rather than an overhead bulb or a flash, which flattens detail and adds glare to glass and glaze.
3. Take one clear photo of the whole item first. Add close-ups only where they matter: a maker's mark, a signature, a chip, the back of a stamp album page.
4. Put something for scale in a second photo if size is not obvious, such as a coin or a ruler.
5. Do not clean, polish or repair anything before photographing it, and do not try to remove stickers or labels. Old labels are sometimes part of the history, and an appraiser would rather see the piece as it is.

For each item, note where it is: the shelf, the drawer, the box in the garage. It sounds trivial and it saves hours when a sibling says yes to item forty and someone has to find it.

Then write down what is known about it. Where it came from, when, and who gave it. Any paperwork, a receipt, a certificate, a letter. And the story, which is the part families most regret losing: the figurine that came back from a honeymoon, the hand plane that belonged to a grandfather, the record that was played at a wedding. If your parent is able to talk about the collection, ask them now, item by item, and write down what they say in their words. Many people find this is one of the best afternoons of the whole process. Go gently if it is tiring or upsetting, and take it a shelf at a time.

Two kinds of label do most of the work. The first is type: Figurines, Royal Doulton, Postage, First day covers, Woodworking, Jazz. The second is who has asked for it: one tag per family member, added when someone says they would like a piece. Several people can ask for the same thing, and seeing that early is the point. A piece with no names on it is easy. A piece with three names is a conversation to have before the day of choosing, not on it.

Keep a tag for given, for pieces a parent has handed on already, and one for appraise, for anything someone suspects is worth more than it looks.

Families divide collections in a few common ways, and the right one is whichever everyone agrees to before anyone starts choosing. Write it down.

1. Rounds in a draft order. Draw lots or go by age, then each person picks one item per round. Reverse the order every other round so the person who chose first does not also choose first in round two.
2. Valuation first for anything of real value. Have an appraiser value those pieces, then either count them against each person's share or set them aside to be sold and the proceeds divided.
3. Sell everything and divide the money, with each person free to buy back what they want. This is the most even-handed and often the least satisfying.
4. Keep the sentimental pieces out of any of these. Most families find a handful of things that obviously belong with one person, and agreeing those first takes the heat out of the rest.

How a collection is divided can have legal and tax consequences, especially when it is part of an estate with a will. Ask the estate's attorney or executor before anything is distributed, and ask an appraiser, not a website, what something is worth.

Collections is built for exactly this kind of list. Start a collection for each group, figurines in one, the stamp albums in another, the workshop in a third, and each item gets a name, notes, an acquired date if you know it, and as many photos as you like, the first of which is its picture in the grid.

When a collection is set to remove backgrounds, which is the default, each new photo comes back with the background made transparent, so a page of thirty figurines looks like a catalog and not like a dining table. The photo as taken is always kept, and any photo can be switched back to it. A household has a monthly allowance of background removals; when it is used up, new photos are kept as they were taken until the next month.

Tags belong to one collection, so the type tags and the who-has-asked tags live alongside the items they describe. Places are shared across all collections, such as Study cabinet, Hall closet, or Garage box 3, and each place has a page listing everything stored there. Once pieces start going to their new homes, a place per person, such as Gone to Anna, keeps track of where everything ended up. You can filter a collection by tag and place, and search by name, note, tag, place or year, in one collection or across them all.

Collections has no field for value and does not estimate one. It records what is there, where it is and what is known about it, and the valuing is for an appraiser.

Everyone in the household where Collections is installed can see every collection, add items, photos, tags and places, and change what they added. Adults can change anything. There are no private collections, because every member can open the photos. Collections is installed in a household and cannot be added to a shared space, so a sibling who lives elsewhere sees it through a share link.

An adult can make a link to one collection from its page. Anyone with the link opens a read-only page, with no account, showing the collection's name and description and each item's name, notes, acquired date and one photo. Tags, places, and who added what stay in the household. The page stays current while the link works, so items added after you send it appear on it. Links expire and can be revoked from the same panel. A page lists the newest 200 items and shows up to 100 photos, which is another reason to split a large collection into several smaller ones.

Because tags are not on the shared page, a sibling looking at the link cannot see who else has asked for a piece. If the family wants that visible, write it into the item's notes, which the page does show. Most families settle the actual choosing on a call with the link open, someone reading out item numbers and someone else recording the picks.

For anything that might be valuable, get a written appraisal from a qualified appraiser before the choosing, and keep it. Insurance on an empty house, or a house in the middle of being cleared, can be different from the insurance it had while someone lived in it, so check with the insurer and ask whether a high-value collection needs its own cover while it is being moved or stored.

Documents holds the appraisals, receipts, certificates and any letter about a piece, in folders you can set to adults only, with PDFs and images previewing without a download. Home Inventory is the place for the handful of pieces that someone has had valued and now needs to insure: each item has a photo, notes, a location and a value, and every change in value is kept in its history. Adults keep it up to date, and everyone in the household can search it.

Once the family has chosen, there is usually a lot left. Dealers and auction houses that specialize in the type of collection can tell you what is worth selling and how. Local collectors' clubs, museums and historical societies sometimes take items that matter to their subject. Charity shops and donation centers take most of the rest.

Let Go is a way to decide the leftovers together rather than leaving it to whoever is doing the clearing. Anyone in the household adds an item and everyone votes keep, let go, or undecided, with a reason, and the undecided pile gets a six-month date to look again. When something goes, an adult records whether it was donated, sold, recycled, given away or discarded, so there is a record of where things went.

A collection of thirty items, divided between two siblings who get on well, needs a phone camera and a spreadsheet with four columns: item, where it is, the story, and who wants it. That is a perfectly good catalog.

The case for something more is the photos, the number of items, and the distance. Two hundred figurines and four siblings in four cities is when one shared catalog with a picture of each piece, and a link everyone can open, is worth the setting up. In either case, the habit matters more than the tool: catalog before anyone takes anything, write down the stories while they can still be told, and agree how to choose before the choosing starts.

• Collections
• Documents
• Home Inventory
• Let Go

Every app in the library is included with the household plan. Install the ones this guide uses and skip the rest.

• How share links work
• Knowing what the household owns, and letting the rest of it go
• How siblings can coordinate care for an aging parent without a group text
• Making your household survivable if something happens to you
• Moving house with kids: a week-by-week checklist that includes them