Lists are an awesome way to stay organised if you can remember where you put them.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
It's a thin line between chaos and control, and although no-one likes a control freak, chaos is often less popular.
Allow me to illustrate.
Under my house, in the roof and throughout the garage are things.
Let's call them 'artefacts' given they can go missing from time to time for historically long periods.
Sometimes years.
This often interrupts efficient living while you wait to stumble upon what it is you're missing.
Meanwhile you rue your lack of organisation, forethought and Dewey Decimal approach to existence.
Like most things in life, manifesting on demand is always the challenge.
Having a list can help.
Having a memory wouldn't go astray either. But failing that, a list.
Take the camping gear for example.
If you're thoughtful enough, or still recovering from the logistical failures of last camping trip, you'll have made a list of where you put everything when you got back.
Hopefully with all the stuff you forgot to take.
Under the house.
So you know where it is next time.
It would have been good to have had that list before you went camping, but no point crying over spilled milk.
Or the lack of a waterproof fly, as the case may be.
It was next to the actual waterproof fly which you forgot to take, by the way.
Under the house.
And if you'd had a list, you'd have known that, or at least you wouldn't have wasted half a day tearing the garage apart.
Before making the same mistake from the camping trip before that.
Cycle of life.
Having located everything, though, with a list, hopefully, you can then enter the heady world of making a 'list within the list'.
That is, things you're going to take to cover contingencies while camping.
And by that I'm referring to the "small stuff" everybody normally suggests you don't sweat.
Toilet paper, matches, patience, resilience and so forth.
Often the source of much perspiration if left behind.
But never rule out leaving big things behind either.
Tent, waterproof fly - things which seemed so obvious once you located them with the original list, you didn't put them on the list within the list.
And thus left on the garage floor when you drove off.
First rule of List Club: "Make list."
Second Rule: Always tick things off off that list once they're in the vehicle.
Otherwise instead of driving to the camp site you might be driving to despair.
Ultimately the trick with lists once you've made them is to remember where you put them.
"In your head" is not necessarily the most reliable place.
