Family inventory

In The Sims 3, each household has a family inventory. It can be accessed in buy mode by clicking the icon that looks like a cardboard box. When moving, if the player decides to 'pack furniture' from their previous house, the furniture appears in the family inventory. It's also used to store items that cannot be stored in the regular Sim's inventory.

Once a Food Replicator or Teleportation Pad is purchased as a lifetime reward, they will be automatically stored in the family inventory. This also happens when buying large furniture (e.g. tents, Sheng Hai Training Dummy, Board Breaker, etc) in markets in Shang Simla, Al Simhara, or Champs Les Sims.