I’ve been making to-do lists over the years on scraps of paper, on backs of envelopes, on shopping receipts, on those free insurance and real estate notepads you get in the mail all the time, etc. Sticking them on the refrigerator, under my car keys, in my purse, wrapped around my toothbrush – I could never find a good enough place to remind me to take it with me.

In the past few years, I’ve tried just saving a short TXT file to my desktop. I’d name it ToDo.txt or ToDo12june07.txt, but they add up and get cluttered or get saved out of sequence and I fail to collate the undone items from several lists into a new list.

Ugh.

Well, here’s my latest attempt. TaDaList.com is an online to-do list tool that has already helped people create over 4 million lists. It’s free, has a super quick sign-up, and is very simple to use.

Your home page is ultra simple. Click “Create a new List.” Then name the list. Then add items one at a time up to 20 items per list. At any time you can delete your list, edit your list, or change the order of the items by dragging and dropping. You can check each item as completed and it will be marked “Done.”

Although your lists are initially private, you can make your list accessible for public viewing. Review the public lists of others for some amusement – and there are some very interesting lists out there. You can allow selected people to see and edit your private list, and be notified by RSS of changes to your list. You can even email a copy of the list to yourself.

That last item is key for me. Now I have my latest ta-da to-do list in my email box as well as at my account page at TaDaList.com for review at any time.

I’ve seen plenty of people wandering grocery store aisles aimlessly after forgetting their shopping list, but they always seem to have their Blackberry to call home and get a reminder. That same Blackberry could retrieve their list from the ‘net and prevent the scorn of your mate for having forgotten the list in the first place.

But grocery lists aren’t the only lists worthy of saving and retrieving. Save a list of important birthdays, or addresses, or phone numbers. Save your email contacts in case you can’t access your email account. Make itineraries. Remember that you can collaborate on a list, so there are plenty of business and social possibilities. You can even prepare your next blog. Here’s their own list of things to list:

• Calls to return
• Thank you notes to write
• CDs to buy
• Restaurants to check out
• Shopping list
• Books you want to read (with links to Amazon)
• People to invite for the party
• Points to discuss on a conference call
• Web links to visit
• Famous quotes you don’t want to forget
• Meeting agenda
• Places to visit
• Movies to watch
• Things to pack for your trip
• Gifts to buy for people during the holidays
• Programs to develop
• New words and definitions
• Things to sell on eBay
• Things you have borrowed and should return
• Code changes to make
• Household chores to accomplish
• Bills to pay

Yikes – Bills to pay. Gotta go!

O.C. DeeDee

• The Twitter Myth The bloggers of SnarlyBoodle.com use Twitter to find a lot of valuable information. It's not as fast or as thorough or as direct as Googling for the same information, but...
• Today's Version of the Pyramid Letter Scam Back in the pre-Internet days, we all used to get pyramid schemes and chain letters in the mail. Scammers dress up these schemes with the reputable-sounding Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) tag,...
• Practical Pre-Nup (Part One) My SnarlyBoodle.com colleague Broadus has been married five times, I believe, and I'm not so sure he's finished. He's a man set in his ways, and it seems to me...

• Baseball Cards Sports Memorabilia -> Autographs, Original -> Baseball-MLB-> Trading Cards Baseball cards have been around for just about as long as the sport has and many of them have turned into...
• What You Are Likely to Find at Coin Auctions? Anyone who is into collecting coins is always on the lookout for a great deal on the coins that they collect. There are a lot of great deals out there,...
• How to Be a Frugal Shopper Are your shopping habits saving you money? If not, it’s time to learn some tricks on how to become a more frugal shopper! Stick to a list. It sounds incredibly...