I like to have reminders to empty the washing machine and put away the laundry, but I always forget to create both, so I created a little Workflow to help me:
It starts by getting the current date, this is assuming I’ve just pressed go on the washing machine. Our machine takes about 2 hours to run a cycle so it first adds two hours to the time. We also air dry all of our laundry so I then add a day to this new time, which is when I will empty the machine. Next I just add two reminders to my Reminders list, the first is to empty the washing machine - and it gets the time in 2 hours as its due time, and then “put the laundry away” gets a time for tomorrow. I prefer to use Reminders for this as it sits on my home screen until I dismiss it or mark it as complete.
It’s little things like this that I’ve found made my life a lot easier with project management solutions.
And example of which is that I typically need to refill the Dog water every 72 or so hours.
I do walk by the water every day, however don’t have the benefit of glancing down at the water to see if there’s any left in the container.
My solution up until today was to slightly nudge the water with my toe, typically that got a little water all over the place, and see how much is left.
If it felt light, I would then refill it, and put it back in its place.
With To Doist (Clicking the link above takes you to a six minute long podcast where you can hear my quick navigation of this app for blind users.) I am able to write naturally:
“fill the dogs water every 55 hours starting today at 3 PM”
And now I have every two days or so a new reminder to refill the dog water.
Added benefit, I get Karma points for doing something I’ve already been doing, and I keep my socks dry.
I have an almost identical shortcut and it’s reminded me to put out laundry I otherwise would have forgotten more than a handful of times.
These days I’m putting all of this kind of stuff in OmniFocus though as I’ve found I’m more likely to actually get it done. Things like this get tagged ‘routine’ and show up automatically in my ‘Current’ view which is kind of like a dashboard I try to get through for the day (also containing other tasks I want to get done).
