Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

blog.alexwendland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 282 posts

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#71

Post by luguenth »

aquafox wrote: post #48

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).

A german kids show investigated this and made a video about it[1]. Here you can see the 4th option of what can happen.

[1] https://youtu.be/-sYZEOftpw4?si=T4btvhTJpfSzA9q2&t=35

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#73

Post by atoav »

wodie wrote: post #64

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.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#75

Post by treflop »

I used to lose stuff and I also grew up in a hoarder house.

I ended up having a place for everything as mentioned in the article.

In the last 10 years, I have not actually lost a single thing. I’m actually pretty proud of myself. I also haven’t lost a single sock, which is really where it matters.

(I do match up my socks every time right after I do laundry tho.)

There was one time I couldn’t find a tool and I was afraid I was gonna break my streak… but I did eventually find it.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#76

Post by flysand7 »

refurb wrote: post #40

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.…

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

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#77

Post by graposaymaname »

treflop wrote: post #75

I used to lose stuff and I also grew up in a hoarder house. I ended up having a place for everything as mentioned in the article. In the last 10 years, I have not actually lost a single thing. I’m actually pretty proud of myself. I also haven’t lost a single sock, which is really where it matters. (I do match up my socks every time right after I do laundry tho.) There was one time I couldn’t find a tool and I was afr…

More intrigued about the socks part, how did you solve it? I’ve lost enough to understand that there’s something clearly wrong about the way I deal with them.

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#78

Post by dcminter »

placebo wrote: post #47

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 ther…

"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

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#79

Post by silisili »

It's just a bandaid. When I was growing up, the 'holding pen' was the top of the dishwasher, and it lived in a constant state of entropy. The mail and bits were piled into a mountain that would fall when bumped into.

The solution is simple: deal with things when they come. Stop putting everything off until 'later.'

Re: How to avoid losing items? Holding pens

#80

Post by dools »

> 2.) instances where we don’t have time to take the item to it’s assigned place (e.g., because it’s in another room).

One of the most important things I took away from the life changing magic of tidying up is that, unless you live in Scrooge mcducks mansion, the chances that you genuinely don’t have enough time to put something back where it belongs are very remote.

EDIT: I actually wrote down my thoughts about this https://www.benkophone.com/2018/12/20/theres-nothing-magical...

Post reply on HN