Take Photos While Taking Things Apart
Every time you move, you have a choice: either try to push this Ikea piece of furniture through the door, or take it apart into manageable pieces. The latter option is usually better, but it has its own problems.
Reddit user u / SillyCyban gave some very simple advice to anyone sorting out their stuff on r / LifeProTips:
Before starting repair work that requires disassembly, first take a picture of everything so that you know exactly how everything should return to a single whole after it is disassembled. It might seem obvious at first, but when all the pieces are all over the place it can be confusing.
Yes, and I would add that you should photograph every step. We think we’ll remember which screws go, where and how the back piece connects to the legs, but we won’t. It’s not enough to know how things should look like. Take a photo of each part as you delete it.
It turns out that this advice also works at other times when human memory is unreliable, but improvement is needed. For example, LighTMan913 writes:
It seems to be the same:
In high school, I had a buddy with my mom who worked at night, so we went to his house for drinks. We wanted to play beer pong, but the table was always full of her work items. So, we took pictures from all possible angles to return them in exactly the same way. As far as I know, she never found out.
Perfect scam. Also very useful when connecting, as flecksable_flyer writes:
I had to do this when I connected my TV to a Blue Ray player, antenna and VHS / DVD player every time I moved. I could never remember how to put all those wires back in the right place without experimenting for hours. It was rather annoying to walk back and forth between the front and back of the TV.
It’s nice to think we have a mind like a vise, but the camera is great support.