Room Keys & LIght Switches

Summary: Always hang onto your hotel key card
Cost; Free


In most hotels in Europe and Asia there is a little card pocket near the door that you put your room key in to activate all the lights - and when you leave you simply remove it on your way out to automatically shut off the lights, lower the thermostat, and let the maids know they can clean up the room.

It saves money and electricity, it is convenient for the hotel staff, and generally a good invention - except if you have ADD. What it means for ADD is that after an exhausting day of business meetings or pleasure travel - and you lug all your packages up to your room, that you then go through a furtive search through all your pockets or bag for your room key, schlep all your stuff back down to the front desk, wait in line, get a duplicate key, drag your stuff back up to your room and open the door to see your old room key smiling at you from the switch.

The hotel room was forcing me to violate the rule of home base.

My previous coping strategy had been to just get two room keys, put one in the wallet and one in my pocket - and if I left the key in the room no worries. A friend let me know that the pocket isn't a sensor at all - you can just drop a business card in there and put your key back in your pocket. Either system works great - as long as you keep your key on your person or at home base.

Using a Staging Area

Summary: Pack early in a specific location
Cost: Free!

Travel represents a big change in routine, with a lot of picky but high priority details. Reduce departure panic by planning a 'staging area' for any kind of trip. The staging area holds everything that is going to go on the trip. Get things into the staging area as early as possible...your clothes aren't going to get that much more wrinkled if they are packed 8 hours earlier.

A perfect staging area is:

• Is impossible to miss on the way out (e.g. near the front door, garage door, or keys)


• Has enough space to put everything needed for a trip (air travel, car, or camping even) or that needs to go to the office with you.


• Is not a storage space or 'dumping ground' - everything put there is intended to go with you on the immediate trip - there is no time for last-minute sorting in the staging area
  
  Here is my typical staging area with suitcase, carry-on bag, and the phone charger plugged in with the phone in the luggage. That way you travel with the cell phone charged but can't leave anything vital behind. Since I'm using the 'two of everything' method there is no reason to wait until I've brushed my teeth before packing the toiletries bag - its already in there.
  
  When I travel I always pack the day before, I also lay out my clothes for the next morning like a 5 year old. I am a tiny bit (okay, a lot) foggy in the morning - especially for that 8 am flight you leave at 6am for...and what might be manageable 'normal' level of forgetfulness becomes a travel minefield.
  
  If you have something you need to travel with but cannot pack ahead of time, my suggestion would be a long color cloth ribbion (I got the idea from the 'remove before flight' tags that aircraft crews use) that you can leave hanging out of the bag as a visual reminder that you need to put something in there. Binder clip your ribbion to the inside of your suitcase.

Never use the hotel dresser drawers

Summary: Using the luggage rack reduces lost items
Cost: Free

Nearly every hotel room has a folding luggage rack to hold your suitcase. When you get to your room grab this thing out of the closet and put your suitcase on it. When I have hanging clothes (suits, etc) I'll hang them in the closet and put the luggage rack in there with them. To get my suitcase I have to 'see' the hanging clothes as well.

Tip: Anything invisible will be left behind in the hotel room.

I carry a mesh dirty-clothes bag to hold the dirty clothes so they are separate from the clean clothes. I will usually hang this from the luggage rack that holds my suitcase (or chair if it is on a chair). All clothes are either in the suitcase or in the bag -not on the floor or anywhere else they are likely to turn invisible.

Your preparation for check-out is faster, you will *never* leave clothing behind in the hotel room again.

If you have work-out clothes or swimsuits that need to hang out in the bathroom consider adding a reminder tag to your suitcase.

Use only the desk and bathroom plugs

Summary: Use visual plugs as reminders not to leave things behind
Cost: Free!

One tough thing about travel is that every hotel room is different, there isn't an established 'home base' for your things, and it is incredibly easy to leave things behind.

TIP: Your most important ally is putting things in your visual space. You are a keen observer but if something is hidden it is likely to be left behind.

One of the big culprits with leaving things behind for me (especially expensive electronics things) is the outlets in the hotel rooms. There aren't enough is one problem - which tempts you into using the deadly outlet behind the bed, under the desk, or under the nightstand.

Scenario: You plug your cell phone into the nightstand outlet. Perfect - your phone is there when you need it. The next morning you are in a rush to get up - you unplug your phone and leave the charger. You pack your bags and check out the charger (invisible) is left behind.

I use only the bathroom outlets and the desk outlets (by necessity) - brick chargers in the bathroom outlet jump right out at you. When I pack my toiletries bag I grab the charger and pack it at the same time.

If I have early check out I will pack my suitcase and leave it in the bathroom with the phone sitting on top of the suitcase. Morning comes, brush teeth, pack toiletries bag and the cell phone charger has never been left behind since.

Two of Everything

Summary: You might as well buy duplicates when you can
Cost: Varies (but less than buying in an emergency)

Travel brings with it a lot of risk and challenges for the ADD person...new locations, new patterns, sleep disturbances, and many many distractions. There are a few worries we can just eliminate immediately with one system:

I call it "GET TWO OF EVERYTHING"

You just get two of everything and pack one of them. You leave it always ready for travel and always in your suitcase ready to go. Keep it contained, packaged, and ready. I can always be ready for travel on very short notice without a lot of panic or forgetting things.

You know how you are - you are going to mess up somewhere forgetting to pack something if you have to remember to take it back out of your bag and put it back in with every trip. Because you will inevatibly forget something you'll be forced to buy it where it might be really difficult to find (cell phone charger for a Verizon phone in London) or very expensive (pretty much anything you need).

When you forget something, you are scrambling on short notice, sometimes with a language barrier, no sense of where things are in your location to try to get the things you need most to be functional when you travel.

Implementation:
You need a packing checklist (covered in another post) - just get two of anything that is on your essentials list, a travel toothbrush, a travel phone charger, a travel laptop charger, a set of headphones, etc.

I have a toiletries bag that has a duplicate of everything I need in it.
I have a backpack for my laptop (I didn't duplicate that of course) that has all the things I need there for travel (my laptop travel charger is a duplicate of my desktop one - worth it - I had to do a major presentation on a borrowed laptop because I forgot the charger once.), lan cable...anyway, I'll cover this in more detail with the packing list.

Meds Reminder

Summary: Reminder system for medications
Cost: Free!


I have a little pillbox for travel so the storage and reminder is built in. This works great and a 7 day box holds meds and vitamins needed for my typical trip.

I had the problem of not being able to remember if I took my prescription meds that evening or not, but a pillbox is kind of a pain for daily meds - so I came up with a simple home system that tracks my meds using the bottles they come in. (This works great for me because mine are one-a-day meds). No more refilling pill containers and no worries that you've forgotten today's meds or risk of double-dosing.

Keys to this approach: Very visual reminder, self-updating when you do the task.

Instructions:
Make a chart with the days of the week (or times) in large squares with a marker and paper. Use bigger paper if you take a lot of meds.

Use:

As you take the dose of medication you just put the bottle in the next slot. This system would of course also work for vitamins, supplements, etc. if the bottles are a managable size.

History:
I came up with this system about 10 months ago and it has worked just great. I did replace the paper once when it got wet - can't beat the cost of this system.