Companion to Chapter 3
The Household Inventory
Before you build a single wall, walk the house and count. Every screen, every quiet little device with a microphone, every subscription, every person. The gaps in your fortress will come from the things you forgot you owned. This worksheet is the count.
The star convention
Two marks, used everywhere on this worksheet:
- ★ Bundle: put a star next to anything that came bundled with something else — the streaming service that came with the phone plan, the smart speaker that came free with the doorbell. Bundled things are the ones nobody remembers signing up for, which makes them the ones nobody remembers to lock down.
- ★★ Shared login: two stars next to any account more than one person signs into. Shared logins mean shared settings — lock one profile down and the other user can unlock it. These get special handling in Layer 6.
List 1 — Screens
Anything with a display someone in your house can put content on: phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, TVs, handheld consoles, the old iPad in the drawer that "doesn't work" (it works).
List 2 — The Invisible Internet
The devices you don't think of as internet devices: smart speakers, voice assistants, smart displays, kids' smartwatches, e-readers, smart TVs' built-in apps, gaming consoles' browsers, the doorbell, the thermostat. If it connects to Wi-Fi, it goes on the list — the network wall in Layer 1 covers all of it, but only if you know it exists.
List 3 — Services
Every subscription and account the household touches: streaming video, streaming music, game stores and subscriptions, app stores, cloud storage, social accounts your kids hold, and anything on auto-renew. Check the credit card statement — it remembers what you don't. Star (★) the bundles.
List 4 — People
Everyone who uses your network or devices regularly: each family member, but also the babysitter, the grandparents who visit monthly, the kid's best friend who practically lives here. For each person: their age (age drives everything in Layer 2), which devices they touch, and which accounts they hold.
When you're done
Keep this worksheet. You'll come back to it on Day Three (every screen gets device-layer controls), Day Six (every ★★ shared login gets sorted into the vault), and every time the New-Device Protocol fires. A new device isn't on your network until it's on this list.