I am a list maker, always have been. If I don’t write a thought down on a piece of paper, the thought flies away never to be found. For years I have kept a list book, a spiral bound book that has all my lists in it. There are reno ideas, books to read, appointments, recipes to try, gifts to buy, things I want to buy or receive, and places to go. There are also several to-do lists in it, sorted by project, or date, or work involved in the task. It’s always been my space to braindump, and I have relied on it to keep me on track.

In the last year or so I’ve noticed that I am not as “on top” of things as I once was. I stopped using the list book, and started to try and track my lists electronically, on either my laptop or iPhone. It’s been a failure, as things weren’t getting entered into the appropriate list or calendar, or there was never one program or app that answered my varied needs. Recently I’ve started to really lose track of things, and last week was the final straw.

I got an email from on of our teenaged babysitters, confirming that she was available to babysit the following Wednesday. It was clearly in response to a request that I had made, but I had no idea why we booked her, and neither did Willy. This distressed me greatly, and it took a couple of days and an extensive sort through my emails for it to come back to me. I was lost and knew it was time to reinstitute the list book. I am much happier now, pen to paper, populating it with all sorts of little lists. The first one in the book is the list of lists, of course.