How to Stop Forgetting Your Leftovers All the Damn Time

I’m about 50/50 on remembering to bring leftovers home from a restaurant. The food is so delicious that I’m taking a special effort to bring it home and eat it again, and yet, I forget it exists for the entire time between getting it boxed up and looking for it in my fridge the next morning.

Being responsible for remembering leftovers at someone’s house is even worse: Pop the box in the fridge, and then it’s out of sight and out of mind. That’s why I love this hack from the LifeProTips subreddit: Put your keys on top of your food. When you go looking for your keys when it’s time to leave, it may take a minute but you will eventually remember that you left them in the fridge (especially if you made sure to tell your travelling companions or your host “ok, my keys are with my leftovers in the fridge”).

Now, there are some practical issues. If your keys have a battery (for example, in a push-to-start car), they may need to warm up before they work again. And if you’re not the driver, you may not look for your keys at all.

But the bigger hack here is to leave something you need and won’t forget with the thing you want to remember. As you’re packing up in a hotel room, you could put your suitcase right in front of the mini fridge. At a restaurant, why not tuck your phone (or keys) partially under your takeout box? That way you have to pick up the box to get your phone, plus you have to touch and think about the box every single time you pick up your phone in between boxing and leaving. (Put it back under each time, of course.)

Get as creative as you like with this, but make sure your marker item is something you truly won’t leave without. Otherwise, you’ll step off the subway and not realise until you arrive at your front door that your keys and your leftovers are both in your friend’s fridge.