Anyone else have a mental list of things that are probably due soon with no idea how overdue they actually are?

Whenever I think of creating/using a tool for this it becomes the other thing on that list. I genuinely think as a society, it’s insane all of us are just figuring out all this stuff on our own. I went to the dentist last year for the first time, and schedule out 6 months every time. I haven’t changed my house filters in an embarrassingly long time.

I've tried something similar. What happens if/when you dismiss the reminder or skip a scheduled event (like that furnace filter) ... are you rescheduling? Letting it fall out of your memory forever, like me?

The reminder stays in my list as “past due” and there is also a badge counter on the icon telling me a total of everything still due and also past due for the day and I am constantly checking my “Today” list which comprises all things past due or due today. If I skip the task for whatever reason I typically just leave it there in that past due state until I get around to it. If I am skipping the task and have zero intention of getting to it anytime soon if ever (cough the windows cough), I’ll just mark it complete and then we’ll just see how I feel the next time it repeats.

for sure, i feel you on this it's like tasks just lurk in the background until they blow up in your face. i use a mix of reminders on my phone and a notes app for a running list. setting monthly check-ins helps too, just to keep it from becoming chaos.

i used to keep a bullet journal/small calendar with daily and weekly tasks and id just jot down the task as it appeared in my head

Reminders, absolutely. My life is run off of reminders. It tells me when it’s time to do everything…all those things you mentioned and tons of others. Every night a little after midnight a shortcut runs and fills out my schedule for the entire day depending on my calendar events and what day of the week it is. Things that are on a consistent schedule are just setup manually and set to some repeating schedule. So if I look ahead to June 1st I see that we need to change the furnace filter, the sediment filter, give the dog her flea/tick/heartworm chew, and I’ll be switching to the next aligner for my Invisalign. I live and die by these reminders. Today I got the reminder to clean the exterior of the windows and I’ll get it again in 6 months.

I really like the Tody app for things around the house. Instead of a specific date, it gives you a colour indication of how close a task it is to needing doing (or how overdue). So much easier to see how urgent something is and I can share it with my wife and we can both get credit for what we did so no one gets to say we’re “the only one who…”

I used to be able to balance all that in my head, like some kind of automatic timer. It was awesome. Then some combination of menopause and long covid broke that timer completely. I have no idea when anything is any more. I write it all down. On an actual physical wall calendar. Which sort of works, tbh.

the dentist one is sitting in my head rent-free right now.

We have a skylight with these things programmed on repeat in it. Before the skylight we had a Google calendar shared between the household members that was color coded of who was responsible for each activity but we could then ask "hey babe did you get the flea treatment done?"

I have a paper taped to the furnace with the date of each filter change. Also a notes app that reminds me. As for the dentist, they make a new appointment for me when I check out from the last appointment, Other things like haircuts, regular checkups, eye exams… I just procrastinate.

I just add these things to my Google calendar with a recurrence. Then I get an email when they're due.

I could go years without remembering some of this stuff, so I put reminders on my phone's calendar. I've got recurring ones for monthly filter replacement and then I've got the every 6 months dental cleaning appointment reminder since they make that appointment as you are leaving the clinic. And then I've got reminders to call and make other appointments on their appropriate months.

Shared calendar reminder on iPhone for us. We also have a physical whiteboard calendar for the family we write those onto and other things that spring up.

I have my dogs flea stuff on auto ship. Just shows up at my door and I give it to her. No extra thought occurs with that one!

I use an index card system and have all that type of thing covered therein. That “drift” and “uncomfortable feeling” you mention is gone from my life.

I'm sure something else on my car will fuck up soon

I absolutely put these things in my phone calendar. Air filter changing, when I give the cats flea treatments, even when my current energy supplier contract expires so I can change to get a better rate. I see no reason not to put them in the calendar. I usually make them tasks or as events at the end of the day with several reminders throughout the day and reminders the day before as well. For consumable items, I order them immediately after completing the task so I have supply for the next time (like flea meds or air filters, for example).

This list is drowning me. I just can't get a handle on it all.

I have a separate calendar called maintenance. All those tasks go on this calendar which most of the time is just turned off but once a week I turn it on to see if I’m due for anything and certainly once a month I review everything that’s coming up in the month ahead : oil changes filter, changes, medical stuff anything that repeats and is boring goes on the maintenance calendar