Use cloth bags for grocery shopping, or make sure you use all of your plastic bags as garbage bags.
Carry a cloth bag with you (I have one that stuffs inside itself, a retractable type), or leave a few in your car.
Archive for the 'accessories' Category
My friends, I now have a garage for my vehicle and I have nothing but good reviews.
Still, it presents Pocket Sally with a Pocket Problem…what should I do with the clicker?
System for right now is: keep the clicker in the left pocket of my well fitting coat (this new addition is definitely part of the problem). You say, “Sally, why not keep it in the car?” Well, entering the code to enter the garage is a chore (the buttons require extra hard pressure and sometimes you have to repeat the code). This may be worth it, however, to not have to feel the burdens of another electronic device in my pocket.
The advantages of keeping the clicker in the pocket:
1. You always have a joke/gag device, or a conversation starter.
2. No worrying about entering the code.
3. No losing it somewhere in the car, or somewhere
4. No pressing the button to close the garage. Simply walk away hitting the clicker.
I expect this system to change soon.
I have a coat that is well fitted, and yet it doesn’t fit when I stuff a lot of stuff in the pockets. Once again, I am forced to face the lack of good systems re: pockets and stuff you carry on you. My pants pockets are already overloaded, and winter is an awkward time to feel uncomfortable. Will the pocket gods every let up?
I refuse the murse one more time. It is THE most tempting thing, but every time I try it, it fails as a system.
This is not a system, but a deep longing for one.
I do want to thank a reader for their question about this.
I thought this would have gone without saying, but even so, System Sally jumps at the opportunity to make further clarifications. When starting your mobile flossing system, surely keep this discrete. Do not floss where innocent people are living, walking, or eating, or anything of that nature.
Good places to floss mobile:
1. Your bedroom
2. Just outside the door if you’re walking your dog
3. In a bathroom
4. In your car, when you’ve just eaten at a restaurant and want to clean your mouth. Still, be discrete.
I will be writing a larger post on pockets when I collect more data. For now, I’d like to mention the flossing component. Whether floss belongs in your back pocket, a front pocket, or no pocket will be covered at length (trust me) in the next post, but I am here to say that flossing is amazing.
The new flossing system:
Disconnect if you head and in practice the two activities of brushing and flossing. They don’t necessarily have to be done at the same time, in the same room, with the same frequency, with the same level of care, or anything. Flossing is one thing. Brushing is another thing. They both are aspects of dental hygiene, but they need not be forever bound together.
Here’s my new system: carry the floss with you. make flossing mobile. Do not look at the mirror when flossing, but do it casually walking around. There are advantages and disadvantages to this.
Advantages to going mobile with flossing:
1. you don’t need a mirror
2. you won’t splatter stuff onto a mirror
3. you don’t have to lean over the sink. this will prevent back strain.
4. you can floss when you need to, after every meal if you’d like.
5. you may even start to see how flossing is joyful and beneficial aside from the traditional benefit of removing food particles from your teeth.
6. no more toothpicks.
7. BIG PLUS***** You always have string on you for an infinite number of other purposes
Disadvantages:
1. the pocket thing. will be dealt with in another post.
2. possible blood and saliva on hands without a sink nearby.
Here, the advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages. Go mobile with flossing.
It is with some fear and trepidation that I make this revisited pocket post. My system for carrying things in my pockets has been a fairly stable and consistent system over the years. But alas, any system has its time for examination and renewal. Let’s take a look at pockets, and the stuff contained within.
It’s hard to imagine a world without pockets. Not having pockets would mean that anything you had to carry was either held in the hand (not a good system), or stored together in a bag (which would then require its own system of organization). When pockets came along, people now had a way of carrying one or two or three small essential items on their person without too much worry.
Most pants that you buy today have at least four pockets. If you include the pick pocket (because it’s a good place to keep your guitar picks), and cargo pant pockets, some pants have a great deal of space for storage.
My old system was simple and fool proof. Pen and keys in the front left pocket. Wallet in the front right pocket. That’s it. This was before the advent of cell phones. I simply needed a pen to go about in the world of knowledge, and keys and wallet covered the transactional realm of life. Life I’ve said in previous posts, having a consistent place for items allows you to employ the “tap test.” The tap test is ingenius in its simplicity, and once trained into the mind provides an absolute trustworthy system.
In either case, System Sally started needing more things on her person than previously. At one point, I thought the more the better and even invested in a carrying bag where a large number of items could be stored keeping the pockets empty. Overall, a carrying bag, purse, or murse is not a good system for me anymore.
Here’s the new system (but I imagine this too might change shortly):
Keys in front left pocket. (FL)
Wallet in front right pocket (FR)
GTD System (Hipster PDA, real PDA), Cell Phone, and PEN in back left pocket (BL)
Personal Hygiene (lip balm, earplugs, gum, etc.) in the back right pocket (BR)
I know what you’re all saying. But system sally, all that stuff in the back pockets is going to be a problem when you sit down. Yes, this is very possible. So let’s examine this together.
Like using Spaces on your mac, we should start by designating different areas of life to different pockets. Having areas of specific activity we should be able to be more productive and less confused when making or performing any transaction or action.
So, we have four spaces: FL, FR, BL, BR. I do not think it matters which subsystem goes where, so I’d be open to changing my current system. Still, I will hold to the new system, which is that only objects directed at the same activity can be placed in the same pocket.
We have GTD, PDA, Communication (cell phone, iPhone), note cards, and pen subsystem that we’ll call Office.
We have personal hygiene (lip balm, earplugs, gum) which we’ll call body maintenance.
We have keys which we’ll call access.
We have cash, cards, license, business cards, which we’ll call commerce.
The biggest stumbling block in this system is the sharpness of pens and keys. It is not nice to carry either of these items. There are a couple of solutions. Since keys are the only item in the access space, would it be good to combine keys with commerce? You’re reaching for your commerce items a lot, and constantly fishing out a tangled set of keys is an unnecessary stress on the system. So, no, we can’t put the keys with the cash and cards. The pen. In an ideal world we would all feel comfortable wearing pocket protectors, and pens could be carried up high in a shirt pocket. But today, not all shirts have shirt pockets, and no one except the rare Harvard professor wears a pocket protector. No, folks, our vanity has led us to quite a predicament. The pen must be carried in the pants, and it either sticks you in front or back, or leaks, or gets bent, or turns sideways and really screws up the way you look in your pants. It’s possible that this is the final frontier of pocket systems. I challenge others to find a good system for this.
Your keys are a problem too. While you can cut down on the number of keys you carry, keys are still a door opening technology that we have to live with. All of the fingerprint and voice recognition things we thought we’d have in the future (2008!), are still absent and this very old key technology has remained. Oh, when will the key go the way of the CD and soon-to-be obsolete book.
As we walk around and interact with the world we have to ensure access to the places we go (access), we have to engage in certain forms of social and financial commerce (commerce), we have to continue our creative work and manage our lives (office), and we have to maintain our bodies (body maintenance).
As I’m writing this, I’m beginning to rethink the driver’s license. The license is an almost completely unused item in the system. Besides the occasional entrance into a bar, or the occasional interaction with a policeman, the license in some ways, is a bridge between access and commerce. It allows you access to use your credit/debit card. The driver’s license, at heart, I think is more of an access item, but for now, since it can so easily be clipped together with your credit card, I think should remain in the commerce pocket. What do you think?
This is still in experimental mode, but I will try some things and report back to you. And please, in the comments let me know what your system is, and what you think about these important matters.
Another thing, cell phones close to certain parts of the male anatomy (and possibly female) could be harmful. This is another reason why office supplies should go in the back.
Current Status of Pocket System:
access FL: keys
commerce FR: license, debit card, cash (cash has its own binder clip, and the plastic has a binder clip)
office BL: pen, 3×5 cards (hipster pda), cell phone
body maintenance BR: lip balm, chewing gum
Here is a system for creating a portable Getting Things Done station:
- Get two milk crate style file drawers. Fill them with your action files (next actions, today, waiting for, someday, read/review), your tickler file (43 folders), and your general filing sections from A-Z. Keep extra files in the back.
- Get a small 3×5 card holder for storing used 3X5 cards and business cards that you’ve used for note taking.
- Have a metal inbox and outbox.
- Get a brother labeler
- Have a paper clip holder (with the magnetic rim)
- Get a small metal container and fill it to the brim with unlined 3×5 cards
- Get a metal jar containing a letter opener, scissor, pen, pencil, and eraser.
- Get a box of binder clips.
- Other general supplies can be stored in shoe boxes. These are ruler, rubber bands, staple remover, thumb tacks, calculator, staples, stapler, extra pens, stamps, scotch tape, checkbook, passport, social security card, birth certificate, packing tape, business cards,
- It’s also nice to have a portfolio thing so that for job interviews you have a nice way to protect cv/resumes and have a pad of paper.
- your own trash bin (this is revolutionary)
- your own recycling bin.
- a strong burlap or cloth bag for your portable library of books.
Once you have acquired all of these items, you should be good to go. Literally, with two or three trips you can have your office move with you. Throw it in the car (if you have a hatchback, even better, because you can actually do your weekly review in the car if you need to), and move to where you need to. GTD: Never leave home without it.
Carry a stack of business cards in your backpack. Give them out freely.
Carry only two business cards with you in your wallet. When you don’t have your backpack you will only have these two, so give them out discriminately. Also, they be used as an emergency piece of paper to write notes.
Umbrellas. Umbrellas are the most useless tool. You never have one when you need one. When you have one and it stops raining then you have this wet rag. Forget umbrellas, just let yourself get wet.
Keep your entire library on your iPod OR select about ten different artists and their top two albums and go simple when out and about. Sometimes it is good not to have access to any song you want. This makes you more intentional about the music you listen to, like it used to be when listening to albums, or CDs.
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