Remembering the little things

For every big task that’s easy to remember, there are dozens that easily slip your mind. Paying the mortgage falls in the former category; changing smoke detector batteries falls in…

For every big task that’s easy to remember, there are dozens that easily slip your mind. Paying the mortgage falls in the former category; changing smoke detector batteries falls in the latter.

Fortunately, someone cleverly tied smoke-detector batteries to daylight-saving time, so that one’s easy to remember. But most other periodic chores tend to fall by the wayside until we fall right over them.

A case in point is the filter in my shop air cleaner. Up on the wall as it is, it’s an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing. I consistently forget to clean it or, when needed, replace it. That was the situation last week when a simple coincidence brought it to my attention.

My wife changes the filter in our furnace seasonally, and had been after me to pick up a new one since the first day of spring. And although I do most of the household shopping, I kept forgetting it. Before doing some sanding last week I reached up to snap on the air cleaner, which reminded me I still hadn’t picked up that furnace filter. That made me take a look at the filter in the cleaner, which was caked with what seemed like pounds of fine dust, which reminded me that I hadn’t cleaned or replaced it since… well, I couldn’t remember since when.

The air-cleaner filter was beyond cleaning, so I pulled it out and bagged it. Since I had shopping chores on my to-do list anyway, I procrastinated the sanding job I was about to do and headed to the store. With the new filter in place I can really tell the difference in shop dust levels, but it’s still something I wouldn’t have noticed without the furnace-filter reminder bringing the shop filter to my attention.

Got anything like that around your shop that needs taken care of? I’m betting you do.

Till next time,

A.J.

 A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.