Why I built a checklist that resets itself
May 25, 2026
I play drums. If you've never packed up a drum kit, here's what you need to know: there are at least 50 pieces, and any one of them can quietly stay home. You don't notice until you're setting up.
I've forgotten sticks more times than I can count. Cymbals, once for an out-of-state gig (drove the whole way; no cymbals). Floor tom legs. I had the floor tom; no legs. Once I added a vocal monitor rig, the surface area of things to forget got worse: mic cord, adapters, power cord.
So about 20 years ago I started keeping a checklist for packing the drums. It was an okay system, on two conditions. I had to remember to use it (who makes a checklist to remember the checklist?), and everything I needed had to actually be on it. Gig-specific items rarely were. And every time I went to reuse the list, I had to uncheck everything first, which wiped out the record of what I'd packed the last time. That bugged me for two decades.
What I actually wanted
Every other checklist app has the same problem. You check things off, then next time you either uncheck everything or remake the list from scratch. Either way, the record of what you actually did is gone.
For most of those 20 years I was designing it wrong. I kept thinking about "templates." Make a template, then create a checklist from it. Somewhere around year 18 the unlock landed: I didn't need a template. The list I was looking at is the template. The thing I wanted was a checklist that resets itself but keeps its history.
How Reuse Lists works
Make a list. Use it. Hit Reuse. You get a fresh copy with everything unchecked, and the original stays exactly as it was, checks and all. The old one becomes your record of what actually happened that time. Reuse the new one and the cycle continues. The full walk-through lives in the Guide if you want it.
That's the whole thing. You never uncheck anything. You never remake the list from scratch. Every fresh copy has a small "from" link back to the original, so you can always trace where a list came from. Pin a favorite as a starting point you can come back to. Updates flow forward, the old ones don't change. It's version control for checklists, without anyone having to think about version control.
It's a thing now
Reuse Lists is live to try. Free tier to start. Pro is $9/month or $89/year if it ends up living in your routine. You can also share a list with someone now if you need a second pair of hands on it (packing for a trip together, partner restocking the diaper bag, that kind of thing). Want some inspiration? Browse the example checklists.
If you've ever made a checklist and then either remade it from scratch or uncheck-spammed your way through it, this is built for you.