Brain Back Up Plan

My scores on the Lumosity games have humbled me.  It's a good thing I have a brain back up plan to help fill in those little memory gaps.  Actually, I used to have little gaps on the road to remembering such things as names and the location of needed items.  Lately, those little gaps are more like the big potholes that have plagued Minneapolis drivers this spring.
My solution for lost items has been to create an 'object central'.  A desk organizer in a previous life, it now has a prominent place on a room divider in the center of my home.  I'm training myself to deposit watch, keys, misc jewelry, stray pens and other miscellany there.  It seems to work really great--unless I'm really desperate to find something and Murphy's law is operating.
I've also taken to making lists, a practice religiously avoided in the past since I'd noticed that putting an item on the list brought the same sense of accomplishment as actually doing the task.  The lists I'm gathering have less to do with tasks that definitely need doing, and more to do with remembering little things--like a book that sounds interesting or the name of a movie recommended by a friend or a website that is referenced in an article.
Next time--the big bug-a-boos:  Names and misc effemera.  (I read an article that suggested learning and using a new word every day will keep you sharp.  My word of the day is effemera which refers to things that need to be retained for only a limited time--such as where you parked your car at the shopping center.)