191–200 of 282 posts
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 realisti…
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…
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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 by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort ,…
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…
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.
Getting Things Done’s “In-Tray” but for real life items. As for take-off points, I use the doorway of every room I’m currently in… seems counterintuitive, but by dumping things in a doorway, you’re deliberately making it annoying to leave the room, so when you do need to leave the room, pick it up and either pack it away right now or dump it in /that/ room’s In-Tray. So each room effectively has an In-Tray and an Out…
If I work on my PC or server hardware at the dining room table I will end up with random components/tools/hardware left there after I finish and my brain will tell me "This is fine, we have something else to do right this second!"
If one of my kids leaves something like a bag of chips on the table right next to that pile of stuff I left behind, my brain will blow a gasket and make having the remediation of the chip bags misplacement by the offender as the super most toppest priority to address right this very second.
So under your system I'd end up with all my stuff in my house's doorways and 2 annoyed teenagers who will probably extract revenge by "cleaning up" my doorways and since they are teenagers and share DNA with me, not a single one of those items will find it's way to it's proper place! ADHD is an adventure for sure lol.
* you can put them on their ends and they don't fall over, which is ideal for storage on shelves
* translucent so you can see what's inside
Pull off the shelf, open up, rummage / sort / process (with extra space in the lid if needed) then pour everything back into the main storage from the lid and reshelve.
It's amazing how being able to shelve on their sides (rather than in a stack) changes things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 by putting stuff in its place to save yourself much more searching effort ,…
The "ding" sound from "Find my iPhone" is pretty commonly heard in my house... but not from my phone.
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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
A few thoughts on keys: 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 coul…
What changed this was a trick I learned from working IT in a large manufacturing company. We got to walk the line and learn from our customers, and one thing they had at critical stations were poka-yoke(0) trays. Think a molded plastic tray filled with exactly all of the things the operator needed to do their assembly, the bolts and nuts and fixtures and what not. So if you were attaching a pulley to a shaft you had a spot that held one pulley, one for a set screw, etc., and the spot was designed for only the right size screw so if it too long or too short you knew you had a problem. On each assembly the operator knew if their tray wasn't full when they started assembling or if it had extra parts in it there was a problem, and when they ended assembly if the tray wasn't empty something wasn't done properly.
One day I had the epiphany that this might just work for me, so I decided to make my own: I bought some craft foam and a plastic tray, and traced/cut spots in the foam for everything I needed for work – my keys, badge, watch, etc. Then every day when I came home my work things went into the poka-yoke, and I forced myself to not leave the entryway until it was completely full ... so no more "oh guess my wallet is in the car", I had to go get it and put it in. Every morning when I was leaving for work I'd empty it. My mornings went from ten+ minutes of me cursing and searching for my keys to... nothing.