I'm not a particularly tidy worker, in whatever I'm doing. By default, everything goes anywhere, and I clean up the mess when I'm done. I have too many rules for myself to keep things contained, but some things refuse to stay in place.
This results in things with many copies being misplaced all the time. Sometimes I intentionally buy or label variants, but that's not always reasonable. So as a fallback, count out a specific number of them and then stick to it. You'll naturally notice when any go missing.
I had the same two mechanical pencils for three years straight, loose between multiple bags. Not even nice ones, the generic kind sold by the dozen in every office supply section. I wasn't giving them special treatment, it was simply too obvious when I packed up if I had forgotten one. If I had a pouch full of them, I would have lost more.
It also makes it obvious when you have too little, or too much. I had exactly a dozen pairs of socks for two years before succumbing to the dryer black hole. How many could I afford to lose before I needed another pack? I could assume I wear a little more than a pair a day and multiply by the length of a laundry rotation, but if I'm counting them when I put them away I already know how many excess I have.
The killer use case is sewing pins. When I'm actively working, why bother moving all the way to the pincushion and organizing or proper storage when I have this perfectly good stretch of fabric I'm working on to stash it in? And so I get pins around the area where I'm sewing, areas where I'm not sewing, and any other nearby fabric which happens to be convenient. For example, the clothes I'm currently wearing.
I could wage war on this habit, but it's easier to have a fixed number of pins and count them when I'm done. If I've lost one, it's time to scour all nearby fabrics until it turns up. Hardly the most efficient method, but I have peace of mind that I won't stab myself at the end of it.
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Nightly Notes
Basically an addendum to counting off. There's really no end to how keeping inventory is useful.
- Rew