Because if we’re not sleeping in our regular bed, we may not have a nightstand or some suitably out of the way place to leave our glasses and the last thing you want is your camping buddy getting up in the middle of the night to pee and breaking your lens 2 days into your weeklong boundary waters trip.
All the locking routines remind me of a new habit I’ve developed. It started after a memorable layover in Dallas, when I accidentally left my suitcase on the tram. Amazingly I made my connecting flight, but it was so traumatic, I started a new behavior because of it. Every time I leave an area, I pause and glance back, surveying for any items I might have forgotten to bring. It takes about a second, but it can prevent a lot of headaches (and running, and frantically calling airport security).
I really like the life hack linked above that tells you to do something unique when you lock your door before leaving on a trip, so you remember you really did it!
This may be for Aussies only, as we have $1 and $2 coins. When your pocket, or purse, is full of them, buy something you need at Coles or Woolies, go through the automatic checkout and just chuck all the coins in and let the machine work it out. You will get rid off all your shrapnel . Just make sure you have enough notes to cover any shortfall.
We have $1 and $2 coins here too (Canada).
These are not novel ideas I have come up with, obviously. Just some simple computer-related tips that I use on a daily basis:
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The folks I work with still use the pull down menus to cut, copy, and paste. I am the only one who uses the shortcut keystrokes to perform these functions (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V, respectively). It saves me a lot of time, plus they think I’m a genius.
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When coworkers copy and paste text into MS Word, they spend the next 10 minutes fixing the formatting, which can be quite frustrating. They do not understand that there are a couple ways to paste the text without the formatting. One method is to select “Keep Text Only” on the little popup icon that shows up after you’ve pasted the contents. But I don’t like this method, since it often takes a lot of time & resources to paste everything in the first place. Instead, I copy everything in to Notepad, immediately cut it out of Notepad, and then paste into MS Word. Works every time.
I remember when my teacher was trying to do something on a computer that involved copying a large portion of text. She was trying to highlight the entire text to be copied. I reached onto the keyboard and hit Ctrl-A and highlighted the whole thing. She thought I was a genius. 
Yep, Ctrl-A is a good one, too.
When I do the copy-paste thing in/out of Notepad, I simple remember VAX (which is easy to remember if you were a computer geek in the 1980s). After copying text from someplace (highlight the text then Ctrl-C), I open up Notepad and quickly do the following:
Ctrl-V
Ctrl-A
Ctrl-X
and then I paste into MS Word or whatever. It takes less than 5 seconds and eliminates a lot of grief.
I do this so often throughout the day that it has become automatic.
This might be a good time to remind people of my Life Hacks Album, including most of the 100 life hacks and others I’ve come across. Solve problems like:
How do you prevent your dog peeing in the closet?
How to prevent your cat from unrolling toilet paper?
What can you use if you don’t have a cake mixer?
How to get the best price on plane tickets?
How to get rid of door-to-door salesmen?
My favourite tip, not in the list, is if you set custom ringtones for important contacts, and set a silent sound as your ringtone, your phone will only ring for those contacts. Works best if you can set custom SMS tones and vibrate patterns too.
This reminds me of a trick from my traveling days: whenever I stayed at a youth hostel that didn’t have a locker (or had one but I didn’t want to pay for it) I would put my wallet and passport inside the pillowcase, underneath the pillow. I figured no one could easily steal them without pulling the pillow out from under me and waking me up.
Yes, computer shortcuts are great little time savers. My favorite that few people know about is that, when you’re typing, if you hold down Ctrl when you backspace, it will delete the entire previous word, not just the last character. Also if you hold Ctrl and then the left or right arrow key it jumps by word. This makes it a LOT faster to edit your writing.
Or (my way), assign a keyboard shortcut (in Word) to “Paste Text Only.” So you copy your text from wherever you’re getting it, then ALT-P (for example), and you’ve pasted in unformatted text, the same way you would have if you’d pasted it into Notepad first, and then into Word.
I use the Notepad trick all the time, but this is even better!
Another lifehack I just realized I use all the time: as soon as the dishwasher is unloaded, I put soap in the dispenser and close it. It’s a clear signal that the dishwasher is accepting dirty dishes, not storing clean ones, and it streamlines the dish-doing process later.
Another good trick is to call 10 minutes before lunch, if you know when that is in advance. I’ve done this many times on purpose 
Along the same lines, when I sitting on the floor and I have a drink but no/inconvenient table access, I put the glass in my shoe, so it doesn’t get knocked over and spilled on the carpet. Since my living room has no couch or coffee table, this is quite handy.
For the Notepad pasters, there’s a sweet little free program called PureText out there that’ll remove the formatting for you, taking out the Notepad middleman. And you can set up the shortcut to whatever you want - default is the Windows key + V, really really similar to CTRL + V for pasting.
Check it out; it’s awesome. I’m not involved with it in any way, just a happy customer.
Three ideas that I’m eternally grateful to fellow Dopers for mentioning :
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Charcoal chimneys for starting your grill.
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Homemade foaming soap. By mixing it with water, our 64 oz. bottle of liquid hand soap will probably last for decades.
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Correctly finding the back of a T-shirt in the dark by feeling for the thicker area of the seam in the collar.
Could you elaborate on this? I’m not following, and I’m all about jigmaking. Thanks.
I live in an area of very high humidity. Even indoors with the AC running, this would result in a very wet shoe!
I do this too from years of living in basement apartments and getting the odd bug in my shoes. It’s a habit now; I wipe off the bottom of my socks and dump out my shoes to prevent getting any little pebbles in my shoes.
My car locking routine (developed after turning off the car, putting the key in my jacket pocket, getting out, throwing the jacket in the car, and then locking the door) is to keep the car keys in my hand after I turn off the car until I’m out of the car and the doors are locked.
I keep dental floss in three or four different places in house - I floss every night while watching tv.
You can use a chopstick or toothpick for putting in a hole with a screw that is stripped.
I have four pairs of cheap scissors in the house in four different rooms so I’m not searching the entire house for a pair of scissors.
I put my wedding rings, watch and glasses in my purse, and put my purse on my shoes beside my bed in hotel rooms at night so I can grab everything at once if we have to evacuate quickly.
I say “stove OFF!” out loud (often in a screechy voice) when turning it off before going out so I will remember that I’ve turned it off.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually started using checklists (don’t laugh). Senior moments can really mess up a long trip. They aren’t long and detailed, just the important or safety items. Some are actually laminated sheets, and some are memorized.
Examples:
MMPG (I think of it as “M-squared-P-G”). This is my leaving for work mantra: Music, Medicine, Phone, Glasses.
CCEB (C-squared-E-B). This for hooking up trailers: Chains, Coupler, Electric, Breakaways.
I actually have a pair of laminated checklists for boating (one in the truck, one in the boat). They have the steps that, if forgotten, could be expensive or dangerous. (Lower top before backing out, drain plug is in, drive raised/lowered, hatch locked, etc.)
I keep a travel_list document on my computer. It enumerates everything I might need for any type of trip: weekend outings, camping, hunting, airport… it’s all on there. When packing, I line thru all the unnecessary items with a magic marker. The remaining items are marked thru with one line when packed, and a second line when they’re actually in the car.
Lots of key suggestions above. My truck has two types of keys. I have a door-only key in a magnetic box, stuffed deep inside a portion of the frame underneath (unlikely to be found unless you know it’s there). I can use it to open the door and find my spare ignition key waaay up under the carpet in back (you have to lift out the rear seat to get to it). Very difficult to get to, but I tend to get way out in the boonies, and a lost key could be disastrous (where I hunt, there is often no cell coverage).