Back in the day, my mother would send my father’s shirts to the dry cleaner, and they would come back folded around a stiff piece of cardboard. She loved those pieces of cardboard.
Every week, she would take a fresh one and make lists on it. Shopping lists, to-do lists, and schedules. She had a lot to manage. Every week, she would take a new piece of cardboard and rewrite everything from the old one that she had not gotten to yet. She rewrote it, by hand, touching every unfinished task again and deciding it still belonged there.
She also loved crossing things off the list. Really loved it. Sometimes she would write down something she had already done, just so she could cross it off. The satisfaction and the visible proof mattered. The reminder that things were, in fact, getting done mattered.
After the dry cleaning era ended, she still looked for good pieces of cardboard. The backs of pads, packaging inserts, anything sturdy enough to hold a week of life’s tasks.
A Household That Never Fully Reset
My mother was a stay-at-home mom. My father traveled a lot for work. They had seven children born 15 years apart. There was always someone who needed something. There were always different schools, ages, problems, and rhythms. It was a household that never fully reset. When one thing calmed down, another thing was already starting up.
Seen in that light, the cardboard was not a quirk. It was infrastructure. Every week, rewriting the unfinished tasks was not inefficiency, it was processing. It was deciding, again, what still mattered. It was a quiet moment of control in a life that rarely paused long enough to feel finished.
The list did not exist to be completed perfectly. It existed to be carried, revised, and interacted with. It existed to make the invisible visible, even if only to one person standing at a counter with a pen and a piece of cardboard.
What We Inherit Without Realizing It
To this day, when I see a really good piece of cardboard, I want to save it for her. I notice it before I even think about it. Something flat, something sturdy, something that could hold a lot without bending. I would bet my siblings do too.
I also know that some of her children and grandchildren have inherited her love of lists. Only now, in addition to handwriting them, some of us use spreadsheets. Different tools. Same impulse.
This is how habits move through families. Not loudly or not ceremonially, just quietly, embedded in muscle memory and instinct. We inherit coping mechanisms along with stories, expressions, and ways of organizing the world that feel natural long before we know where they came from.
We Are Still Rewriting the List
Now, in addition to handwriting them, we use different materials. Fresh planners, new apps., clean notebooks. Man, I love a fresh notebook and a great pen!
We rewrite the same things because our lives keep changing. Time gets tighter, energy runs out, and new responsibilities appear. Rewriting the list is how we take stock.
Starting again is not failure, it is recalibration. Sometimes the reason you need a fresh page has nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with capacity.
And continuing to make the list, even when it feels repetitive, is proof that you are still engaged. That you still care, and that you are still trying to manage what needs managing.