What I Learned Building an App at 72 — and Why It Changed How I Think About Our Stuff

A personal essay about building Stuffolio, learning something new later in life, and finding a calmer way to manage the things we own.

This wasn’t part of some grand plan. I just wanted something new to work on, something to keep my mind engaged. What I didn’t expect was that it would turn into an actual app.

There were plenty of false starts. More than a few “Damn, I think I need to start over” moments. And an embarrassing number of times I told myself, “I’ll just add one more feature.”

It took much longer than I expected, but I learned a lot along the way. And somehow, it turned into something I’m genuinely excited to share.

It started with a manual

The idea for the app, which I eventually named Stuffolio, didn’t come from a brilliant insight. It came from standing in front of something that wasn’t working and thinking, I know I’ve seen the manual for this … somewhere.

That moment kept repeating itself.

I was always looking for the same things: manuals, serial numbers, setup instructions, repair videos, or trying to remember whether a warranty was still valid or had quietly expired. Sometimes the information was in a folder. Sometimes it was buried in an email. And more often than I’d like to admit, it was in “that drawer.”

You know the one.

Eventually, I had to admit that "that drawer" was not a filing system.

So I built something simple: a place to keep track of what we own, along with the information we actually need — warranty dates, manuals, support contacts, even online help videos. One place instead of twelve.

But as I worked on it, the questions got bigger.

My wife and I started looking around our home and asking ourselves: Where did all of this stuff come from? And maybe more importantly, what are we eventually going to do with it?

Things have a way of accumulating quietly. Some we bought. Some were gifts. Others just seemed to appear over the years. Along the way, we assumed certain items would naturally become heirlooms — things we’d pass down to our daughters because they mattered to us.

What we’ve learned, sometimes gently and sometimes not, is that what feels meaningful to one generation doesn’t always feel that way to the next. Some of the things we thought our kids would treasure turned out to be things they simply don’t want.

That led to a different kind of question. How do you even talk with your kids about that? Not as a legal conversation, and not as something heavy or uncomfortable, but as a practical way to make things easier for them later?

So we tried it.

One evening, we FaceTimed our two daughters and walked through some of the things we’d always assumed they’d want. The oak school desk we’d picked up at a yard sale. A set of china that had been in the family for decades. Pieces we’d collected while traveling.

They were honest with us. The desk wouldn’t fit either of their lives. The china wasn’t their style. But a few things surprised them — items we’d almost overlooked meant more to them than we expected. And some things we thought were just ours, one daughter asked if she could have someday, while the other had no interest at all.

It was clarifying for everyone.

It wasn’t a difficult conversation. It was a relief. One we’ll have again.

That’s when I caught myself thinking, Ah — another feature.

I added something I eventually called Legacy Wishes: a simple way to leave context behind. We could describe an item, note why it mattered, and indicate which of our daughters might want it. Just as important, it gave them a way to tell us if they didn’t. If neither wanted something, we could note whether to donate it, sell it, or let it go.

It wasn’t about control or planning everything out. It was about clarity — and removing a little uncertainty for everyone involved.

Learning something new later in life

Building the app became its own education.

I started the way a lot of people do now: watching instructional videos and trying things out, often without fully understanding what I was looking at. I spent a lot of time staring at development screens thinking, Well, that didn’t work.

Along the way, I discovered that modern AI tools could be surprisingly helpful. At first, it felt like they were doing too much of the work, and that made me uneasy. But over time, something shifted. They stopped feeling like a replacement and started feeling more like an airplane — and I was the pilot.

They could help with navigation and smooth things out, but I was still deciding where to go and when to land.

As I got more comfortable, I noticed something else. I wasn’t just asking questions anymore. I was pushing back, debating answers, and occasionally correcting the tools themselves. Sometimes I was clearly the student. Other times, I found myself in the role of teacher.

That back-and-forth is where the learning really stuck. I came to think of it this way: the difference between using these tools and actually learning from them is what you do when the output looks good enough. If you accept it and move on, you save time. If you stop and ask "wait, is that actually right?" you learn something. Both paths start in the same place. They just end up in very different ones.

What mattered most was that the learning was still mine. The tools didn’t replace effort or judgment. They made it possible to work at a level I couldn’t have reached alone, but only because I kept questioning what they gave me.

It reminded me that learning later in life isn’t about speed. It’s about curiosity, patience, and being willing to feel uncomfortable long enough for things to click.

Something I didn’t expect: the app became a record of my own learning. The earliest screens were built by someone who barely understood what he was looking at. The newest ones were built by someone who’d spent months debugging, redesigning, and arguing with AI tools about the right way to do things. Both versions are still in there, side by side. That’s what learning looks like when you do it by building something real. The early work isn’t failure. It’s a snapshot of who you were before you knew better.

What surprised me most was where it led. I started by asking the tools how to do things. Then I started asking why they did things a certain way. Then I started telling them when they were wrong.

At some point, I stopped just building the app and started building tools to check the app. Not because I didn’t trust my own work, but because I’d learned enough to know that "it looks right" and "it is right" aren’t the same thing. That turned out to be the most useful lesson of all.

I built a set of audit skills that trace how data moves through the app, check whether every field actually gets saved and restored, and flag the spots where something quietly goes missing. When I shared them with other developers, some of them started adapting the approach for their own projects. That was unexpected. I went from watching tutorial videos to having conversations with professional developers about methodology.

I’m still learning. But the trajectory changed somewhere along the way. I went from asking "how do I make this work?" to asking "how do I know it actually works?" That second question turns out to be harder, and more interesting.

A clearer way to think about the future

One afternoon, we were in a Goodwill store and came across a set of dishes that looked familiar. I took a quick photo, ran it through Stuffolio, and learned just enough about what they were and what they were worth to make a simple decision.

We passed. We already have too much stuff.

That was the whole point. I wasn’t looking for a perfect answer. I just wanted enough information to decide and move on — the same kind of clarity I wanted to leave for our daughters.

Somewhere along the way, the technical questions gave way to more personal ones. Would someone know what this is? Would they understand why it mattered, or feel comfortable letting it go? Would the people I care about most be left guessing — or have enough context to decide for themselves?

I realized we don’t need more complexity. We need clarity, on our own terms.

There’s a word for what I was trying to build toward, though I didn’t have it at first: stewardship. Not in the formal sense, but in the practical one. Taking care of what you have. Knowing what it is, where it came from, and what happens to it when you’re done with it. Not acquiring more, but understanding what’s already here.

Most apps in this space are built around the assumption that you want more stuff. Stuffolio is built around the assumption that you already have enough, and you’d like to make sense of it.

That’s what I tried to build. And honestly, that’s what I’m still figuring out — like everyone else at this stage of life, trying to make a little more sense of the things we own and what they mean … if anything at all.

Terry Nyberg, 73, is a lifelong learner who built Stuffolio after finally admitting that the top drawer was not, in fact, a filing system.

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Every feature in Stuffolio started the same way: standing in front of something and not having the answer.

The warranty I couldn't find became a tracking system that tells me when coverage is about to expire, and puts a pass in my Apple Wallet so I have proof at the repair counter. The vacuum that broke six months after we bought it became a feature called Repair, Keep, or Replace, which pulls in repair costs, replacement prices, and the item's age to help make that decision without guessing. The dishwasher manual I swore was in the filing cabinet became a product memory that stores manuals, receipts, setup notes, and support contacts in one place.

And the conversation with our daughters, the one I almost didn't have, became Legacy Wishes.