Lists

I think that I was never a big fun of making lists / keeping track of stuff - I kinda believed that I could keep everything in my head and that’ll be enough.

After I’ve got married the first improvement was to employ Wunderlist - because we always ended up having an argument with my wife when I had to go shopping.

Dropping in Wunderlist:

• made it possible to keep a shared list between us
• add items items to buy independently from when we will be buying it
• ability reorder the list right away when we are about to enter a large shop
  • depending on the number of items on the list; this could reduce the number of times the list needs to be rescanned; and reduce the total path within the store to collect all items

Wunderlist was sunsetted after Microsoft bought it and “integrated it” into “To Do” for which I’ve given a go but I missed some things…I was looking for a new alternative and ended up using “Memento Database” which is different in many ways - but it has more flexibility and can be shape better to match different use cases.

I think the key properties of these lists for me is:

• the items are collected asyncronously
• but they are batch processed
• I also use it to provide structured access to some informations; like membership cards - but those could also be moved to

Credentials

I was using LastPass for a couple years - when they changed their free subscription stuff to only use it on one device; I switched to BitWarden - and I’ve never regretted that move :)

• looks less sophisticated
• its more concise - and especially it doesn’t need tweaking with those domain equiv rules; it can be done more easily

I’ve loaded a lot of extra information into it; so that its easier to find things - sharing via organizational groups is also a very effective.

Periodic tasks

Time went on…I was happy with this setup; until a broken pipe incident happened in our home:

• only Helga (my wife) and Pikk-Pakk (~1 year old) was at home
• hot water started sparying out below the counter sink
• she called me on phone - I explained where are the possible upstream taps which could be closed
  • the closest tap was inaccessible due to the spraying hot water
  • there are 2 kitchen-wide control valves right after eachother
  • unfortunately both of them were stuck
• she tried to ask for help from the neighbours - and luckily one guy was around
  • he also tried all of them without much progress
  • tried to use some pliers on the stuck taps
  • eventually with some silicon protective gloves and possibly makeshift stuff he was able to close the nearest tap to the spraying hot water

Cleaning up the 5 centimeters of water from our home was not really fun - but the bigest lesson was that I failed to keep an eye on that the close valves are operational.

I’ve later closed one of the safety valves which was seriously stuck - but after a couple of open/close excercises it became easily movable.

The plumber who was visiting us right after this event expalined that scale could form around the closing mechanism - which could make it harder to close; excercising the valve every half a year could help keep it in top shape when it will be needed the most.

This opened my eyes that there are things I might be forgetting - because they are periodical; but may have a longer cycle I could recall…changing tires on the car is similar but in that case I may notice that the driving stability have changed.

I was looking at simple calendar events at first - but that seemed too much; I can’t allocate a 1 hour timeslot somewhere in the future - I might not be able to do it right around that time!

I’ve experimented with Google Tasks - which also seemed like a bit too much (iirc it seemed like it will clutter my main google calendar) but eventually I’ve found Google Reminders - which is nicely accessible from Google Calendar as well.

And from then on - I’ve started adding optionally periodical tasks which doesn’t need specific time to that.

Right now I have periodic reminders for * excercise all water valves in our home * regular maintenance of the coffee machine * refill the napkin holders * robot vaccum maintenance * print something with the inkjet printer

Notes

Right now that I’ve collected all these - I think ToDo’s and Google Task might want to be a combined solution for my Lists+Tasks problems…and it might be only my personal preference that I want to see them separetly?

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