I've also really found it helpful to put things in plain sight.
The best example of this is shallow toolchest drawers where you can for example open one and see all your screwdrivers.
The worst is the back of the refrigerator, where things go to turn into science experiments. I can kind of see why those super-expensive 48" wide (but shallow) subzero fridges sell for so much.
Just went from a side-by-side to a French Door. (I admittedly have an upright freezer in my basement.) This seems so much better than what I had. The freezer drawers are shallow and much easier to see stuff I might want in the near-term than with the side by side.
It is fairly deep and that takes some discipline for the refrigerator but I've been good with that so far. Not that many locations where things can disappear. We'll see how long the discipline lasts. It "feels" like a bigger fridge/freezer even though I think the volumes are about the same.
I went back and forth. I do have a lot of condiments for ethnic cooking and so forth that have pretty good refrigerator lives for a home kitchen. I think the real trick is to keep leftovers and genuinely perishable stuff towards the front.
Best cleaning / organizational tip I’ve learned : everything out of place goes into a tote. Every day shuttle the tote around the house to deposit the items in their rightful place. This reduces reorganizing to linear time
I like Akro bins, or some "system" that I can always expand easily in the future like Sterilite stackers (I've gotten 1 or 2 every year for about a decade).
Going to sound facetious for a second: whatever size works for you and the space.
It's more just what works for the space and flow. For instance, I have identical milkcrate size boxes at the bottom and top of the stairs. Why? So I can exchange them interchangably and they are easy to drop stuff into as I pass. I take the bottom of the stairs upstairs to sort and I take the top of the stairs downstairs then just toss the bin back to the closest spot so I don't have to climb stairs... lowest energy possible.
In another case, I have a small-ish tub for assorted wires. The workflow is I have a big box of wires that are sorted into baggies, I pull a wire out, I use it, I put it in the small bin, then I sort the small bin back into baggies in one go. It fits on my shelf and the intention was to prevent it from becoming unsorted wires... which it unfortunately has because I can't keep it up.
So really, it's just whatever works best for the situation, area, what it will contain, etc so you just have to find what works best for your situation.
Ha! Similar idea to mine, but I use an open-wide-shallow basket/bin instead. My saying to my family is, “Everything has a place to go.” The ones that don’t go in their place quickly enough land in the basket/bin.
Now, during the weekend cleanup chores, the items are preferably placed in the right places.
Growing up lacking access to good stationery, I kinda get anxious and panicked and tend to over-buy stationery items for my kids and mine. So, I have a pretty large basket container just for the stationery.
Yeah, but where does the tote live? It’s mobile and might not be where I need it when I need it. Then I go looking for it, and all of a sudden I have two problems and have difficulty getting back to what I was doing in the first place. :-)
That’s simple enough. Just get a second tote for holding your first tote! Then you just have to keep track of the second one to be able to locate the first one.
Fuck. This is why making lists never works for me either. I always lose the damn list...
Just make a notes.txt file on your computer. Now which directory did I keep that in? Also gotta keep it up on your screen all the time or you forget you even have it.
Just get a paper pad with your lists on it. Then place it in a random drawer and forget you have it for 3 days. Place it in a dedicated home, forget where that is and lose it again.
Just put it on sticky notes, and put them where you will see them. Now you have 5000 sticky notes everywhere, and don't even understand what you wrote on them. Then learn to ignore all of them.
A notepad that I carry in my pocket? Now I have more shit to take with me that I will forget. What about that computer in your pocket? I already have it silenced to keep it from distracting me... No easy way to keep basic text files sync'd with my computer without using a cloud service. Where did you store that text file on Cloud Storage anyways?
We throw everything out (to thrift stores if possible) after a year of no use. Has bitten us almost never and when it has it’s usually something useless to someone else too (cheap to replace).
We have a problem getting rid of stuff in this way because we have hoarding tendencies. For every item you consider removing, you think up new ways in which you might need it in the future, or you say you will have a yard sale and make a little bit of money back, neither of which are realistic.
I think the problem is further exacerbated for people growing up in scarcity, so they are used to frugal operations, and are unable to cope with modern day flood of goods. Our parents are a good example, they save plastic grocery bags, all boxes, all original containers even for e.g. a coffee maker. "Just in case we will sell it one day".
I don't know what to do :-) Maybe we should write a will/set aside a fund to pay a junk removal company to come before our kids get ahold of the mess, so they don't inherit the burden.
Yep, guilty. Got plastic grocery bag full of plastic grocery bags in my pantry. In my defense, I use them as either trash bags, or as food storage (instead of cling film). Still they tend to accumulate over time.
I drove my spouse crazy with this because I'd put his stuff in a pile in the same place every time.
He'd get annoyed with me because I moved his keys from the microwave and put in next to the rest of the keys. Apparently that was his spot for his keys.
The way I 'fixed' this is I got a little basket for his keys and now he gets after me because I leave my keys on my desk.
One other thing that would cause turmoil was mail. We would get mail in then dump it on the counter. I would sort it into piles but apparently the pile was an efficient storage method. Now we have inboxes right next to the door, even our dog has one for all of her stuff because before we'd place her leash wherever she wandered off to when she walked inside.
It may be linear in the number of items, but not in the number of rightful places (you’d have to sort the items by rightful place first). Deciding on each rightful place also tends to not be constant-time.
On the bright side, at least the rightful places are presumably still in Euclidean space so there are efficient solutions for the optimal traversal paths.
And how do you manage to force yourself to do that last daily part? Most people who struggle with storing stuff in a dedicated storage also struggle with routines.
I've done this. The problem I find is having to fold my clothes and re-orginize every tote 10-15 times a day, as the totes are rotating around the various pettestals.
I'ts definity a case of "house eats you". You know what I mean.
I do have a few bins mostly related to financial information like statements and bills--which I'll probably never need to look at given online access to many things--but that are probably good to keep around for a while before chucking them.
For that, you can use "spike filing". Place everything incoming you might need on top of a spike (or on top of a pile or in the front of a folder). The automatically sorts by traverse chronological order, making it easy to both retrieve old documents and to know the age so you can discard older ones.
I went through a phase where I sort of did this. I kept forgetting or misplacing one thing when I left the house. So I started assigning myself one extra small thing to bring with me. It may just have been the attention I was paying, but it helped!
I used to be bad with keys. Now, in addition to having an AirTag on them, I have a hook for them right by the front door which I pretty much use religiously. I do have to go searching for my iPhone sometimes but not my keys.
I used to not have keys because I was too small. Then when I was about 8 or so my parents gave me keys and told me to put them in my pocket every time I leave the house. So I do. It's not difficult stuff.
Saying "I'm bad with keys" has to be such a low expectation of one self I can't even comprehend. Like those people who say "I'm bad with maths", but even worse.
I certainly don't take my keys if I don't need them like I'm not driving my car. Someone else may be driving. I'm just walking from my house. (I have a keyless entry system.) I basically only need my keys if I'm getting in my car when, yes, they generally go in a pants pocket or fanny pack or backpack.
What I did used to do was be careless in tossing them somewhere random when I came back into the house when I did take them. I now have a keyhook by the door I consistently use. But, sure, be condescending. I'm sure it will serve you well.
Exactly so your problem is your system is way too complex. So many ifs, so many decisions, so many considerations. There's no way you can reliably trust yourself to not make mistakes once in a while. Do you have a workflow to help make this decisions? Is the software you write also this overcomplicated?
My system is, if I'm outside the house my keys and wallet are ALWAYS with me, doesn't matter whether I think I'll need them. I'm 40, I don't think I've ever misplaced my keys. Can't swear, but I really don't remember a single instance.
It's easy to fall into being condescending when all I see around me is people struggling with basic stuff. I get the impression "huh I must be a genius or something, I'm the only one that can do keys". I mean just look at the sibling comments "put keys in jacket", "what if it's too hot for a jacket urr durr". It's really astonishing.
Hello from Houston! I personally use a small backpack that I leave my keys, wallet, extra charging cords and a dedicated set of diabetes things and anything that comes out of that bag goes straight back when I'm fine with it. Works pretty well
I just end up buying enough of the item to be within arms reach of nearly anywhere I'm likely to use it.
I used to never be able to find a screwdriver when I needed it, so now I have seven screwdrivers: three regular ratcheting, three stubby ratcheting, and a ratcheting one that lives in my pocket. I keep a regular ratcheting on my desk, in my living room, and in my bedroom, which are the only places I would realistically ever use these things.
As a result there's really no reason for me to lose it; it's already contained into the area that it already lives.
I do this with a lot of stuff now. Separate chargers for my laptop for my desk and my bed, separate iPhone chargers, and a bunch of other stuff.
You can't do it with everything but, for example, I tend to have a stocked travel kit that I don't need to raid (for the most part) for everyday charging gear. My laptops live where they live and I'll bring their chargers with them; they basically don't move unless I'm traveling. My office has some tools and my garage has some tools. I may need to raid one or the other but not for routine stuff.
I certainly don't need to bring a downstairs charger upstairs to charge my iPhone at night.
Yep, I keep a laptop USB-C charger in my backpack, so I don’t have to unplug things and move things.
As you said, you can’t do this for everything; some things are too expensive or take too much room to have a million duplicates of, but I don’t feel like I lose those things as much.
The things I feel like I loose are generally relatively inexpensive, like pens or scissors or screwdrivers. I got lasik so I don’t need them anymore, but i used to have 10 of the $7.95 pairs of glasses spread out everywhere as well, in case I lost a contact lens at work or something.
Aliexpress is kind of a godsend for me. A lot of tools on there in particular are shockingly good.
USB-C has been a game changer for charging. I'm now able to keep a charger that will work for almost everything I own everywhere I might need one. One at my desk, one in my bag, one by the TV, one by the bed. Next step is strapping a set of adapters to each of those cables.
USB-C is the best. When I had to trade my Intel MacBook pro back into IT for a new M1 with a MagSafe connector, I told them I wanted to keep the USB-C charger. I didn't want another damn charger to carry around with me. They thought it was super weird that I would prefer USB-C, but it charges everything I carry with me.
Also I replaced a few receptacles in my house with ones that have USB-C ports on them. Then I never have to worry about them walking off...
Yeah I mentioned in a sibling comment that there are things that are too expensive to have a bunch of, so you can’t do it for everything, just relatively cheap “I can never seem to find X when I need it…” stuff.
eh... my car before that, a 90s Japanese car, had plain old dumb keys. It was stolen twice (and found abandoned twice) by joy riders who easily stole it.
I applied this rule to tape measures, because I found I never had one when I needed one, e.g., out in the car. So my new rule became: if you can't easily find a tape measure when you need one, buy another one at your earliest convenience.
Now I have one in my work bag, at least one in the car, one in my main toolbox, a few hiding around other places in the garage, one in the kitchen, probably one upstairs, on in my desk drawer, etc.
I did the same thing when Dollar Tree started stocking tape measures for $1.25. I figured that they’ll be accurate enough and I do need to measure stuff a lot, so I have ended up buying four.
I also have a keychain one that lives on my house keys, which has come in handy a few times (even if it is limited to 6 feet).
I applied this rule to microfibre cloth for my glasses. I bulk buy 100 of these online and place one each in every jacket I have, plus a few more around drawers at my home
A decade ago, I bought a bucket of 25 nail clippers. My wife was initially skeptical, but over the next few years, grew to appreciate the low demands of the system: Need a nail clipper? Go to the bucket. See a nail clipper in a weird place? Put it in the bucket, if you feel like it and have the time. Otherwise, don't worry about it. There'll be one in the bucket when you need it.
I always lost my guitar picks while in school and going through my guitar phase. Eventually I bought a whole box of them and scattered them throughout my room. Less than a week later I couldn't find any. Some items, like guitar picks and bobby pins are just cursed out the factory it seems.
I have to fight against my hoarding tendencies, but I figure that for small stuff, the likelihood of getting so much that it's a problem is unlikely. Even if I had 100 screwdrivers and 100 tape measures, that would be a bit odd, but it's not enough for a reality show to make an episode about me.
The stuff you have there is all pretty small and not terribly expensive, so I don't think it's very hoard-ey.
I did have to get rid of a lot of my computer equipment that I was hoarding...rack mount servers are sort of addictive because they're inexpensive and powerful, so I had a bunch of them taking up way too much room in my basement. I've given all of them away to friends and coworkers and replaced them with a few tiny gaming PCs.
that diagonal cutter seems a strange choice to me. Care to say more on why that particular item? You already have a pair of scisors and a cutter in there...
In my EDC case / kit(s) I tend to add a pair of grippy pliers instead of cutting pliers - think Knipex Cobra or the Knipex parallel pliers for grabbing / tightening stuff.
Try to keep in mind that your attention to detail is almost certainly perceived by them to be fastidious, and that quietly your seniormost colleagues and leaders may well muse: "Man, if only sublinear would loosen their standards, just imagine how much faster we'd proceed". Put another way: the fact that you can't relate to OPs problem is because you're hardwired to solve it (putting things in their place) continuously, likely without exception, which means you're paying a different cost. Try to think of _that_ cost when you bristle at their solutions.
I think it's less that being meticulous is time consuming than that, in the same way that things have different values to different people, things can have different costs. I feel like if I didn't put things in convenient places that may be difficult to find later, I'd end up doing a lot of backtracking in the present.
Eg, I misplace my wireless headphones a lot. Something comes up that demands my full attention, so I take off my headphones. My headphones live at my desk.
If I walk to my desk, I'm likely to forget what I needed to do - there's lots of stuff demanding my attention on my desk, after all. Someone could also engage me in conversation on my way. Much of the time I'll return to my original task without issue, sometimes I'll get distracted for 15 minutes, sometimes I'll get distracted for an hour.
It's a lot cheaper to just put down my headphones. Or maybe it's more accurate to think of it as less risky.
"Meticulous" is basically defined as "the upper end of the right level of care about detail." What you call meticulous others might call unnecessarily pedantic, or obsessive. What they call meticulous, you might find sloppy.
I'm in the process of coming to terms with how neurologically diverse people are.
Some people are completely comfortable with being late, or having smudged glasses, or driving erratically - it does not bother them in the slightest.
Their world is completely different to mine, and it's not that they don't care about the sloppy code or that they are too lazy to polish it - they don't even see it.
Humans are surprisingly diverse in how their brains work.
Some sympathetic reading about ADHD might help. And think about who in your life might have it in some degree. That person who leaves the cabinet doors open, or who has 500 tabs on their browser. Don’t pathologize it.
My approach is to have separate “take-off” points near the entrance/exit of each room.
Example: If I’m in my home office and find that some things need to go to the living room and some to the kitchen, I simply queue them to take off instead of taking a trip every time I realize an item needs to go. Then when I take a coffee break, I’ll grab all the items; drop the living-room items off on the way to the kitchen, and drop the kitchen items off when I arrive. I get my coffee; grab anything queued up on the kitchen take-off point that can be dropped off on the way, and drop them off on my way back.
As it works out, everything is almost always where it ought to be; and when it’s not, I know where it will be instead.
The key is that I always check the take-off point every time I leave a room.
I might just steal this idea from you. Having a partner who ”organize through chaos” (which I maintain is not an actual system) there are constantly treasure troves of knick-knacks everywhere, usually hiding important items. No matter how often I try to organize it’s always messy, I think this might be the answer. Thank you!
Pick things up (until both hands, arms, elbows, armpits, etc are fully saturated).
Put things away. DO NOT PICK UP ANYTHING AT ALL UNTIL BOTH HANDS ARE EMPTIED.
1) take out the trash
2) put clean stuff away (from your "sorting station")
3) pick things up
4) put things away
5) circulate (start from a bathroom or kitchen and spiral "outwards"), and begin the "pick things up" phase again.
Take out the trash removes "constipation" (the ability to "evacuate" or "clear" unwanted or unneeded items)
Put clean things away reaps the rewards of your prior investment in cleaning, and clears out your "sorting station" ... the necessary, temporary workplace for sorting or prepping clean items.
Picking things up (until saturation) makes it a game of ordering, organizing the held items where you're effectively pre-planning your drop-off route in order to remove the items from your hands.
Putting things away UNTIL EMPTY stops the ADD distraction of "doing something else useful" because you "MUST" complete the "pick things up phase" by "putting them all away".
Spiraling outwards from a bathroom generally means that a bathroom has an unambiguous "cleaned" state (trash, toilet, sink, mirror, floor, drawers, etc).
Bathrooms/kitchens generally connect to bedrooms or living spaces, and repeating the steps above (trash, clean, pick, put) in the bedroom or living area is effectively "guaranteed to terminate".
> contradicts the advice to only move an item once
This would have to be wrong.
This would ban laundry hampers, dirty clothes would go straight into the machine.
I think the rule would be if you pick up the item from the “take-off” point it goes away.
You have to be able queue things before the clean. OP isn't cleaning, they are constructing the queue. You would be allow to move from queue to queue I guess, but you'd have to make sure there can't be a topographical loop.
This is a good idea, as is the idea in the article. The basic requisite however is a desire to not lose stuff. My wife always loses track of her EarPods. My oldest kid always loses his pocket knife.
I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they'd still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort <now> by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort <later>, is either lost on them, or they just greatly value the present over the future.
I do not even get annoyed about it anymore - just like I do not get annoyed that it turns dark at night. My stuff is always in its place, and before we leave the house they will spend 10 minutes finding theirs.
I lose my shit all the time (everything that doesn’t have a fixed location anyway), which is why everything that regularly comes with me is now in it’s own specialized bags. There’s a work bag, a ‘going out with kids’ bag, etc.
I still remember the last time I lost my keys, which is like 26 years ago, when I was 10. But I still identify as that kid that always lost their keys xD
I am consciously trying to whittle down my keychain to reduce the chance of temporary losing access to things. I have a keypad door lock so I’be been able to get rid of my front door key.
However, I found that decreasing the use of something can increase the chance of losing it, because you’re not “touching” it all the time and not aware of its location.
I have an Airtag, but wish that it could be integrated into the car keyfob to whittle down the size even more.
This reason is precisely why I got an implanted RFID chip. When I lived in apartments, I would _constantly_ lose my door fob. It's much more difficult to lose the chip if it is part of you ;)
(I wouldn't recommend embedding an Airtag though, ha)
Probably I'm just old but I'm very aware of an electronic device being a single point of failure. (I realize the car's keyfob is that--and have been meaning to investigate the practicality of keeping a spare key in the car in a faraday bag.) I do keep a physical door key on my keyring even with a keypad door lock and have one somewhere on my property as well.
Most cars have a physical key tucked in the fob, and will do some form of passive RFID “auth” when the fob is brought close to the start button or equivalent. It is not too different from engine immobilizer keys.
I'm aware of the key in the fob. I Wasn't aware that there were other capabilities if the fob itself wasn't working. Was just experimenting the other day about the capabilities and limitations of the keyfob under different conditions.
It seems as if you can't lock the key in the car but I'm not sure how much I trust that experiment.
Only one of my cars has a key fob, and I finally took that fob off my keychain once I realized that I can use the 5 digit keypad on the door to lock and unlock it. It's very freeing only having a few small keys in your pocket and not a bunch of giant fobs.
The problem I find is that, other than my iPhone, the reason I often can't find an iDevice is that I haven't used it recently and have no idea where I left it. Unless it was attached to a charging cable it probably isn't in a position to ding or otherwise be found.
It is easy to say to do this, but in reality what happens is I am deep in my thoughts and all of it happens on autopilot. I consciously understand it would save me time to put them correctly away, but there is just nothing triggering me to do it. If I had a very intelligent watch that dinged me every time I'm supposed to do it, I would do it. The tech is not there yet though.
I think it's the multiple processes going on in the brain, where there's a process that will scan for danger, and this same track is able to break out of the deep thought process. I have to assume this same process just doesn't see those points as something that should interrupt the deep thought process.
The same process with any novel activity will be much more sensitive, but as I do more of the same activity it will consider it a safe activity. The more I do something, the more I would be on autopilot allowing the deep thought process to go on.
For example when I am in a new place, after moving or whatever reason, it is easier in the beginning for me to stay organized because the process is still sensitive and is more careful, but the more I get complacent the less I will be thinking about where to put the things and the deep thought track will be fully prioritised.
It is a skill that you can develop to maintain a basic awareness of what you are doing that you can break yourself out of autopilot to do the small things that you need to do.
I came here to say the same thing. It's something I have been actively working on lately. It's quite an effort to pay attention to the small things, something as simple as making sure I put the mouse into my backpack along with my laptop. But the pay off is enormous ... I get a really strong sense of relief when I do find things more often where they are supposed to be.
Should I schedule time to put myself consciously in this situation where I do it every day for 30 minutes?
Because otherwise it's a paradox. For me to be able to train it, I would have to be able to come out of autopilot at that specific time in the first place.
My wife and I are very similar to you and your wife. I will note that on the rare occasion when I misplace something, I've found that it's efficient to just enlist her help finding it immediately. She is much better practiced than I am at finding things where they don't belong.
A tip that's helped me: when you finally find the thing you misplaced, and are done with it, don't put it back where you found it, put it in the place where you first looked.
This reminds me of a rule I have for naming things in code (functions, variables, etc).
Say you add a function, and then the first time you call that function, you call it by a different name. Don't fix the function call to match the original name, but instead go back and change the name to match how you tried to call it. The state of mind you are in when you called the function is a better guide to naming than the state of mind you were in when you implemented it.
I really do not like the assumption people don’t do something because they don’t want to it.
I really want to make the system work reliably but I can’t. I’ve spent 30+ years trying to make things work. They just don’t.
It works when I have planned to do things ahead of time, but I can’t get my brain to remember to do it when interrupted, the attention shift doesn’t trigger “callbacks” or “publish events”. This is a fundamental prerequisite to make this work.
People’s who can do this will have difficulty not understanding people who can’t.
This same problem applies to “thinking before I speak”. I can’t do that. People think I can because I don’t make the same mistakes by rote learning what not to say in specific situations. I can’t anticipate new mistakes or generalize previous ones.
This is not an effort or desire-mediated performance, it is a focus-mediated performance. Some people find that cognitively more difficult than others.
If you are the type of person to intensively multitask, to occupy your short-term memory with different trains of thought in a holding pattern, you will tend to sacrifice command skills - if your memory is already busy reading and writing on all available channels, it isn't going to pop up "You have something in the oven" or "You were holding a pen a minute ago and you set it down on the second tier of the brown bookshelf" or "You need to get the kid from school". The internet & smartphone era has unlocked a degree of hyperstimulus that can veer into the pathological for those of us with our brains wired a certain way.
This is also a thing if you're doing things at a 'normal' degree of focus but your memory is impaired (number of operational channels reduced) in some other fashion, through age-related cognitive decline or some types of medication or chronic sleep deprivation or a TBI.
This is the ADD trait. We are chronically late to important events, we lose things all the time, we frequently accumulate a thousand browser tabs, we jump from thing to thing as they come up. Forming subconscious routines is difficult, and when we do it, we often allocate them only the barest muscle memory - I lock my car regardless of whether it's already locked or should be locked (bringing in groceries) because my macro for leaving the car is to lock it. There are pros and there are cons to this cognitive style. But it's certainly not a matter of DESIRE to do things or CARELESSNESS.
What helps? I find:
* Writing things down, especially notes.txt
* Snapping pictures of things as easier form of notes
* Scheduled phone reminders
* Getting sufficient sleep
* Getting more than sufficient sleep - leaving an extra hour in bed to think about things, plan your day
I'm not the person you're asking, but do the same thing, and for me I can usually find it visually by scrolling through "all photos" if it's recent, and sometimes using search in the photos app.
> I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they'd still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort <now> by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort <later>, is either lost on them, or they just greatly value the present over the future.
That doesn't give enough credit to the original idea. I know it's an exaggeration, but 20 holding pens will totally defeat the purpose. The idea is to have one place in every room where you can put anything. This saves the mental effort of trying to recall what is the place for thing-at-point. There is a place, for all of them, don't think about it. Just dwim it into the holding pen.
I do the same. I use the stairs as take-off points. I regularly go up and down anyway, so I take whatever is on the stairs and put it away, or put it on the next floor stairs if it needs to go to the attic. Now if I could only get my wife to do this too. She will put items on the stairs but always forget to take them up or down and walk right past them :-D
Ha! This is how I manage files between my desktop and home directory’s subfolders. Don’t have time to sort? Drop into the parent directory, and sort it later.
A related pro-tip I learned from catering, which I now use often for leftovers, potlucks, gifts, etc. If you have things in the fridge you need to take with you when you leave your current location, put your keys in the fridge with them!
I will almost always ignore the box/take-off. I pile stuff up by my office door that needs to go out to the garage. That spot always has tools piled up. A tote probably would help.
Also, there's design trick to make things look better. If you put 3 or 4 things onto a dish or textile or something, they magically convert from clutter to intentional. I don't know if a plastic sterlite works for this though.
My solution, from years of living out of a suitcase traveling for work, was “everything has a place”.
Need a pen? It’s in the first pocket of the backpack. When done, it goes back there. Need a charging cable, in the zipper pouch on the outside. When I unplug it, it only goes back there - no where else.
The other that helps when it comes to leaving stuff behind in a hotel room is a designated space - say on the desk. Anything removed from baggage - clothes, pens, computer, passport - doesn’t go anywhere but the desk. Then when you need to leave the room, you don’t need to search the room, only clear the desk.
At one point I put the RFID card I use to access the building i work at into the left pocket of my jacket instead of right pocket. I don't remember why but that day I was thoroughly convinced I forgot it at home. During lunchtime break I went back to my home only to find out it's not there...
Since then I keep the card in my left pocket.
The advice of having a specific place for every thing is good, but sometimes you mess up. I think I have ADHD so most of the time I don't pay any attention to where I leave things, I guess developing good habits is good whatever that is. Putting things in specific places is I guess one of such habits
In this article, the meaning of _pen_ as in an enclosure, a cage, a tray, a box, a container [0]. A holding pen in this case means a holding tray, a holding box, i.e., a container for holding things. A pen (cage, tray) for holding things.
I would continuously lose ballpoint pens. At one point I thought the solution was to buy an expensive ball point pen as that would make me more aware of not losing it, but the effect was that it would just take a bit longer. I finally settled on buying many cheap pens. One humorous thought that I was curious about was that since I never found any pens (either my own or those lost by others), was it the case that there are people who find pens in the same way I lose them or do they just vanish into another dimension...
I take this strategy of buying many of a thing to scatter all over with a few things. I've found it very effective.
In particular, I live in a sunny area at high elevation where sun protection is a big deal; finding out that one's only tube of sunscreen is lost or empty could have serious consequences on an outdoor activity day.
Tubes of sunscreen and sunglasses distributed to all vehicles, all backpacks, and all house entrances have ensured no sunburns in the family the last two years.
Interesting. For contrast, switching to the one-good-pen approach was what finally did the trick for me. These days, I find I'm more likely to run out of ink than lose my pen. To each their own!
"Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"We propose a somewhat more speculative theory (with apologies to Douglas Adams and Veet Voojagig). Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, walking treeoids, and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, a planet is entirely given over to spoon life-forms. Unattended spoons make their way to this planet, slipping away through space to a world where they enjoy a uniquely spoonoid lifestyle, responding to highly spoon oriented stimuli, and generally leading the spoon equivalent of the good life"
I never lost a single sock during or after washing. Why? Because I care (they are expensive cycling socks) and I go after each sock immediately when putting them on the drying rack. So where are they?
1) Entangled with one of the other wet clothing items. (60% of cases)
2) Lost on the way between laundry machine and drying rack (20% of cases)
3) Still in the laundry drum (20% of cases).
I see your point, I’m a neat freak who cares about most things I possess. Trouble is, we don’t always have time to be this neat. For example, I’m standing in my laundry room rolling up socks when suddenly someone calls from upstairs. I go into my hallway, still working on a pair of socks, and discover it’s my partner calling me because our son just defecated on the floor of the tiny bathroom upstairs. I throw the socks on the first available surface and run to help, focusing on the new problem at hand, and now the socks are lost. This exact situation is on the extreme side of course. It’s more common for me personally to put down a glass/cup to assist someone with a minor yet to them seemingly important task and then proceed to search for my lost bevrage.
Isn't there a fourth failure case - that they have failed to make it into the drum in the first place? Maybe not a huge issue for yourself, but can occur in my workflow.
This is the one which annoys me most, and so I have to have a 'staging area' for unpaired socks which are awaiting their unwashed partners.
I like the tip from Adam Savage on where to put new things: Quickly think about where you would search first for this item. The first thought that comes to mind is where you store it. Next time you look for the item it is right where you would search first.
This is good advice. But I'd like to extend it to: and if the place you first would look for sucks consider making a better one. E.g. if your stapler goes missing a lot and clutters your desk, relabel an easy to access drawer to "desk stuff" and put it in there. Put all other small things that fit the description in there. Return desk stuff into the desk stuff drawer.
Should you now have a hundred pens, consider breaking them out into a pens and markers drawer etc.
This is really not rocket science, but you need to care a bit about the fact that you now became the official bouncer for the desk stuff drawer and you should not let other stuff into it. And when you find a stapler in the kitchen, you take it and put it in the one place that makes sense: the desk stuff drawer.
And you can create many such drawers, and with a certain amount of things you will have to. And yeah, consider adding literal labels.
Exactly, I can always remember where something is or should go if I made the initial decision of where to store it. But if my spouse decides on a new organizational system, even if explained to me, I can't seem to recall it when I need it!
From the title I thought, how is holding a pen all day going to stop me from forgetting where I put things down? Lol.
This is at times my personal hell. I'm of the type who uses the "find my phone" feature about ten times a day and needs Tile trackers for my keys - and wallet. If only a tracker existed that was small enough to attach to my two pairs of prescription glasses.
I'll have a think about designated putting things down areas, but I'd likely just forget.
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[ 19.4 ms ] story [ 689 ms ] threadI've also really found it helpful to put things in plain sight.
The best example of this is shallow toolchest drawers where you can for example open one and see all your screwdrivers.
The worst is the back of the refrigerator, where things go to turn into science experiments. I can kind of see why those super-expensive 48" wide (but shallow) subzero fridges sell for so much.
I still don’t think my wife understands the struggle that the top shelf is completely invisible when I open the fridge door unless I get way down.
It is fairly deep and that takes some discipline for the refrigerator but I've been good with that so far. Not that many locations where things can disappear. We'll see how long the discipline lasts. It "feels" like a bigger fridge/freezer even though I think the volumes are about the same.
https://www.sterilite.com/product-page.html?product=14723V06...
It's more just what works for the space and flow. For instance, I have identical milkcrate size boxes at the bottom and top of the stairs. Why? So I can exchange them interchangably and they are easy to drop stuff into as I pass. I take the bottom of the stairs upstairs to sort and I take the top of the stairs downstairs then just toss the bin back to the closest spot so I don't have to climb stairs... lowest energy possible.
In another case, I have a small-ish tub for assorted wires. The workflow is I have a big box of wires that are sorted into baggies, I pull a wire out, I use it, I put it in the small bin, then I sort the small bin back into baggies in one go. It fits on my shelf and the intention was to prevent it from becoming unsorted wires... which it unfortunately has because I can't keep it up.
So really, it's just whatever works best for the situation, area, what it will contain, etc so you just have to find what works best for your situation.
Now, during the weekend cleanup chores, the items are preferably placed in the right places.
Growing up lacking access to good stationery, I kinda get anxious and panicked and tend to over-buy stationery items for my kids and mine. So, I have a pretty large basket container just for the stationery.
Just make a notes.txt file on your computer. Now which directory did I keep that in? Also gotta keep it up on your screen all the time or you forget you even have it.
Just get a paper pad with your lists on it. Then place it in a random drawer and forget you have it for 3 days. Place it in a dedicated home, forget where that is and lose it again.
Just put it on sticky notes, and put them where you will see them. Now you have 5000 sticky notes everywhere, and don't even understand what you wrote on them. Then learn to ignore all of them.
A notepad that I carry in my pocket? Now I have more shit to take with me that I will forget. What about that computer in your pocket? I already have it silenced to keep it from distracting me... No easy way to keep basic text files sync'd with my computer without using a cloud service. Where did you store that text file on Cloud Storage anyways?
All spare cable go in a place. You never use them. But if you throw away that mini dvi cable or that display port one, you’ll need it tomorrow.
I think the problem is further exacerbated for people growing up in scarcity, so they are used to frugal operations, and are unable to cope with modern day flood of goods. Our parents are a good example, they save plastic grocery bags, all boxes, all original containers even for e.g. a coffee maker. "Just in case we will sell it one day".
I don't know what to do :-) Maybe we should write a will/set aside a fund to pay a junk removal company to come before our kids get ahold of the mess, so they don't inherit the burden.
If I saw his junk lying around, it went in his drawer. Far more often if he saw my junk lying around, it went in my drawer.
‘Where’s thing?’ Probably in my drawer.
Although we were respectful of each other’s stuff. We were best mates so it worked out.
He'd get annoyed with me because I moved his keys from the microwave and put in next to the rest of the keys. Apparently that was his spot for his keys.
The way I 'fixed' this is I got a little basket for his keys and now he gets after me because I leave my keys on my desk.
One other thing that would cause turmoil was mail. We would get mail in then dump it on the counter. I would sort it into piles but apparently the pile was an efficient storage method. Now we have inboxes right next to the door, even our dog has one for all of her stuff because before we'd place her leash wherever she wandered off to when she walked inside.
I'ts definity a case of "house eats you". You know what I mean.
I do have a few bins mostly related to financial information like statements and bills--which I'll probably never need to look at given online access to many things--but that are probably good to keep around for a while before chucking them.
https://www.enotesnepal.com/class-11/notes/business-studies/...
You’d think I’d learn and stop buying black ones as well. Talk about stealth pens.
i thought it was going to be about how to hold a pen.
Saying "I'm bad with keys" has to be such a low expectation of one self I can't even comprehend. Like those people who say "I'm bad with maths", but even worse.
What I did used to do was be careless in tossing them somewhere random when I came back into the house when I did take them. I now have a keyhook by the door I consistently use. But, sure, be condescending. I'm sure it will serve you well.
My system is, if I'm outside the house my keys and wallet are ALWAYS with me, doesn't matter whether I think I'll need them. I'm 40, I don't think I've ever misplaced my keys. Can't swear, but I really don't remember a single instance.
It's easy to fall into being condescending when all I see around me is people struggling with basic stuff. I get the impression "huh I must be a genius or something, I'm the only one that can do keys". I mean just look at the sibling comments "put keys in jacket", "what if it's too hot for a jacket urr durr". It's really astonishing.
I used to never be able to find a screwdriver when I needed it, so now I have seven screwdrivers: three regular ratcheting, three stubby ratcheting, and a ratcheting one that lives in my pocket. I keep a regular ratcheting on my desk, in my living room, and in my bedroom, which are the only places I would realistically ever use these things.
As a result there's really no reason for me to lose it; it's already contained into the area that it already lives.
I do this with a lot of stuff now. Separate chargers for my laptop for my desk and my bed, separate iPhone chargers, and a bunch of other stuff.
You can't do it with everything but, for example, I tend to have a stocked travel kit that I don't need to raid (for the most part) for everyday charging gear. My laptops live where they live and I'll bring their chargers with them; they basically don't move unless I'm traveling. My office has some tools and my garage has some tools. I may need to raid one or the other but not for routine stuff.
I certainly don't need to bring a downstairs charger upstairs to charge my iPhone at night.
As you said, you can’t do this for everything; some things are too expensive or take too much room to have a million duplicates of, but I don’t feel like I lose those things as much.
The things I feel like I loose are generally relatively inexpensive, like pens or scissors or screwdrivers. I got lasik so I don’t need them anymore, but i used to have 10 of the $7.95 pairs of glasses spread out everywhere as well, in case I lost a contact lens at work or something.
Aliexpress is kind of a godsend for me. A lot of tools on there in particular are shockingly good.
Also I replaced a few receptacles in my house with ones that have USB-C ports on them. Then I never have to worry about them walking off...
Mazda 323’s used to open each other too, and also Ford Lazers. These problems don’t seem to happen anymore, but at some cost.
Now I have one in my work bag, at least one in the car, one in my main toolbox, a few hiding around other places in the garage, one in the kitchen, probably one upstairs, on in my desk drawer, etc.
No regrets. Life is better now.
I also have a keychain one that lives on my house keys, which has come in handy a few times (even if it is limited to 6 feet).
The whole household uses them
It contains:
- sharpie
- pen: https://amazon.com/dp/B005Y0T8C2
- postit full-stick notes pad
- cutter of all: https://amazon.com/dp/B000VYOISU
- opener of all the things: https://amazon.com/dp/B0017DGTSG
- diagonal cutter - any decent, but I like klein: https://amazon.com/dp/B0000302W8
at first I questioned myself duplicating stuff. Was I being a hoarder? But honestly, it has paid off 1000x
The stuff you have there is all pretty small and not terribly expensive, so I don't think it's very hoard-ey.
I did have to get rid of a lot of my computer equipment that I was hoarding...rack mount servers are sort of addictive because they're inexpensive and powerful, so I had a bunch of them taking up way too much room in my basement. I've given all of them away to friends and coworkers and replaced them with a few tiny gaming PCs.
In my EDC case / kit(s) I tend to add a pair of grippy pliers instead of cutting pliers - think Knipex Cobra or the Knipex parallel pliers for grabbing / tightening stuff.
the other "cutter" is just a very good letter opener
You may be right, I use it much less frequently (but when I do use it, it is the right tool).
Eg, I misplace my wireless headphones a lot. Something comes up that demands my full attention, so I take off my headphones. My headphones live at my desk.
If I walk to my desk, I'm likely to forget what I needed to do - there's lots of stuff demanding my attention on my desk, after all. Someone could also engage me in conversation on my way. Much of the time I'll return to my original task without issue, sometimes I'll get distracted for 15 minutes, sometimes I'll get distracted for an hour.
It's a lot cheaper to just put down my headphones. Or maybe it's more accurate to think of it as less risky.
Some people are completely comfortable with being late, or having smudged glasses, or driving erratically - it does not bother them in the slightest.
Their world is completely different to mine, and it's not that they don't care about the sloppy code or that they are too lazy to polish it - they don't even see it.
Humans are surprisingly diverse in how their brains work.
Example: If I’m in my home office and find that some things need to go to the living room and some to the kitchen, I simply queue them to take off instead of taking a trip every time I realize an item needs to go. Then when I take a coffee break, I’ll grab all the items; drop the living-room items off on the way to the kitchen, and drop the kitchen items off when I arrive. I get my coffee; grab anything queued up on the kitchen take-off point that can be dropped off on the way, and drop them off on my way back.
As it works out, everything is almost always where it ought to be; and when it’s not, I know where it will be instead.
The key is that I always check the take-off point every time I leave a room.
I've always thought it was the same as the bubble sort algorithm we were taught in uni.
Take something one step towards where it belongs, and pick up anything going in the same direction you are.
Repeat that a few times and everything gets where it belongs. Not the most optimal algorithm (it's a bubble sort after all) but it helps.
Pick things up (until both hands, arms, elbows, armpits, etc are fully saturated).
Put things away. DO NOT PICK UP ANYTHING AT ALL UNTIL BOTH HANDS ARE EMPTIED.
1) take out the trash
2) put clean stuff away (from your "sorting station")
3) pick things up
4) put things away
5) circulate (start from a bathroom or kitchen and spiral "outwards"), and begin the "pick things up" phase again.
Take out the trash removes "constipation" (the ability to "evacuate" or "clear" unwanted or unneeded items)
Put clean things away reaps the rewards of your prior investment in cleaning, and clears out your "sorting station" ... the necessary, temporary workplace for sorting or prepping clean items.
Picking things up (until saturation) makes it a game of ordering, organizing the held items where you're effectively pre-planning your drop-off route in order to remove the items from your hands.
Putting things away UNTIL EMPTY stops the ADD distraction of "doing something else useful" because you "MUST" complete the "pick things up phase" by "putting them all away".
Spiraling outwards from a bathroom generally means that a bathroom has an unambiguous "cleaned" state (trash, toilet, sink, mirror, floor, drawers, etc).
Bathrooms/kitchens generally connect to bedrooms or living spaces, and repeating the steps above (trash, clean, pick, put) in the bedroom or living area is effectively "guaranteed to terminate".
Saturate your arms, put everything away, repeat.
Best of luck!
This would have to be wrong.
This would ban laundry hampers, dirty clothes would go straight into the machine.
I think the rule would be if you pick up the item from the “take-off” point it goes away.
You have to be able queue things before the clean. OP isn't cleaning, they are constructing the queue. You would be allow to move from queue to queue I guess, but you'd have to make sure there can't be a topographical loop.
I could have 20 holding pens in the house and they'd still lose their stuff, since the idea that you have to exert even a minor amount of effort <now> by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort <later>, is either lost on them, or they just greatly value the present over the future.
I do not even get annoyed about it anymore - just like I do not get annoyed that it turns dark at night. My stuff is always in its place, and before we leave the house they will spend 10 minutes finding theirs.
I still remember the last time I lost my keys, which is like 26 years ago, when I was 10. But I still identify as that kid that always lost their keys xD
I am consciously trying to whittle down my keychain to reduce the chance of temporary losing access to things. I have a keypad door lock so I’be been able to get rid of my front door key.
However, I found that decreasing the use of something can increase the chance of losing it, because you’re not “touching” it all the time and not aware of its location.
I have an Airtag, but wish that it could be integrated into the car keyfob to whittle down the size even more.
(I wouldn't recommend embedding an Airtag though, ha)
It seems as if you can't lock the key in the car but I'm not sure how much I trust that experiment.
I think it's the multiple processes going on in the brain, where there's a process that will scan for danger, and this same track is able to break out of the deep thought process. I have to assume this same process just doesn't see those points as something that should interrupt the deep thought process.
The same process with any novel activity will be much more sensitive, but as I do more of the same activity it will consider it a safe activity. The more I do something, the more I would be on autopilot allowing the deep thought process to go on.
For example when I am in a new place, after moving or whatever reason, it is easier in the beginning for me to stay organized because the process is still sensitive and is more careful, but the more I get complacent the less I will be thinking about where to put the things and the deep thought track will be fully prioritised.
Should I schedule time to put myself consciously in this situation where I do it every day for 30 minutes?
Because otherwise it's a paradox. For me to be able to train it, I would have to be able to come out of autopilot at that specific time in the first place.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness
Say you add a function, and then the first time you call that function, you call it by a different name. Don't fix the function call to match the original name, but instead go back and change the name to match how you tried to call it. The state of mind you are in when you called the function is a better guide to naming than the state of mind you were in when you implemented it.
I really want to make the system work reliably but I can’t. I’ve spent 30+ years trying to make things work. They just don’t.
It works when I have planned to do things ahead of time, but I can’t get my brain to remember to do it when interrupted, the attention shift doesn’t trigger “callbacks” or “publish events”. This is a fundamental prerequisite to make this work.
People’s who can do this will have difficulty not understanding people who can’t.
This same problem applies to “thinking before I speak”. I can’t do that. People think I can because I don’t make the same mistakes by rote learning what not to say in specific situations. I can’t anticipate new mistakes or generalize previous ones.
If you are the type of person to intensively multitask, to occupy your short-term memory with different trains of thought in a holding pattern, you will tend to sacrifice command skills - if your memory is already busy reading and writing on all available channels, it isn't going to pop up "You have something in the oven" or "You were holding a pen a minute ago and you set it down on the second tier of the brown bookshelf" or "You need to get the kid from school". The internet & smartphone era has unlocked a degree of hyperstimulus that can veer into the pathological for those of us with our brains wired a certain way.
This is also a thing if you're doing things at a 'normal' degree of focus but your memory is impaired (number of operational channels reduced) in some other fashion, through age-related cognitive decline or some types of medication or chronic sleep deprivation or a TBI.
This is the ADD trait. We are chronically late to important events, we lose things all the time, we frequently accumulate a thousand browser tabs, we jump from thing to thing as they come up. Forming subconscious routines is difficult, and when we do it, we often allocate them only the barest muscle memory - I lock my car regardless of whether it's already locked or should be locked (bringing in groceries) because my macro for leaving the car is to lock it. There are pros and there are cons to this cognitive style. But it's certainly not a matter of DESIRE to do things or CARELESSNESS.
What helps? I find:
* Writing things down, especially notes.txt
* Snapping pictures of things as easier form of notes
* Scheduled phone reminders
* Getting sufficient sleep
* Getting more than sufficient sleep - leaving an extra hour in bed to think about things, plan your day
* "Bookmark all tabs"
How do you get a hold of the picture later?
I've tried doing this, but I have a hard time finding the pictures if I haven't quickly moved the information to textual form.
That doesn't give enough credit to the original idea. I know it's an exaggeration, but 20 holding pens will totally defeat the purpose. The idea is to have one place in every room where you can put anything. This saves the mental effort of trying to recall what is the place for thing-at-point. There is a place, for all of them, don't think about it. Just dwim it into the holding pen.
Whoa, it's halfway there
Whoa,leave it on the stairs!
https://youtu.be/ZKW-USW5uTo
That way I can't leave the house without dealing with them
So unfortunately not much use if you're commuting on public transport…
Also, there's design trick to make things look better. If you put 3 or 4 things onto a dish or textile or something, they magically convert from clutter to intentional. I don't know if a plastic sterlite works for this though.
Need a pen? It’s in the first pocket of the backpack. When done, it goes back there. Need a charging cable, in the zipper pouch on the outside. When I unplug it, it only goes back there - no where else.
The other that helps when it comes to leaving stuff behind in a hotel room is a designated space - say on the desk. Anything removed from baggage - clothes, pens, computer, passport - doesn’t go anywhere but the desk. Then when you need to leave the room, you don’t need to search the room, only clear the desk.
Since then I keep the card in my left pocket.
The advice of having a specific place for every thing is good, but sometimes you mess up. I think I have ADHD so most of the time I don't pay any attention to where I leave things, I guess developing good habits is good whatever that is. Putting things in specific places is I guess one of such habits
[0] https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/pen
In particular, I live in a sunny area at high elevation where sun protection is a big deal; finding out that one's only tube of sunscreen is lost or empty could have serious consequences on an outdoor activity day.
Tubes of sunscreen and sunglasses distributed to all vehicles, all backpacks, and all house entrances have ensured no sunburns in the family the last two years.
"We propose a somewhat more speculative theory (with apologies to Douglas Adams and Veet Voojagig). Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, walking treeoids, and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, a planet is entirely given over to spoon life-forms. Unattended spoons make their way to this planet, slipping away through space to a world where they enjoy a uniquely spoonoid lifestyle, responding to highly spoon oriented stimuli, and generally leading the spoon equivalent of the good life"
I knew it! :-)
[1] https://youtu.be/-sYZEOftpw4?si=T4btvhTJpfSzA9q2&t=35
This is the one which annoys me most, and so I have to have a 'staging area' for unpaired socks which are awaiting their unwashed partners.
Throw transiet shit in, have a sense of what's inside without looking too messy.
https://muji.ca/products/pp-file-box-standard-wide-1-2
Should you now have a hundred pens, consider breaking them out into a pens and markers drawer etc.
This is really not rocket science, but you need to care a bit about the fact that you now became the official bouncer for the desk stuff drawer and you should not let other stuff into it. And when you find a stapler in the kitchen, you take it and put it in the one place that makes sense: the desk stuff drawer.
And you can create many such drawers, and with a certain amount of things you will have to. And yeah, consider adding literal labels.
That is what happened to me.
This is at times my personal hell. I'm of the type who uses the "find my phone" feature about ten times a day and needs Tile trackers for my keys - and wallet. If only a tracker existed that was small enough to attach to my two pairs of prescription glasses.
I'll have a think about designated putting things down areas, but I'd likely just forget.
(I see that https://findorbit.com/products/orbit-glasses-x exists but that's for Apples only).
As long as I can find my phone, I am good.