A 20-Year Side Project

Phillip Harrington | May 2026

TL;DR: I built a little SaaS called Reuse Lists because I kept forgetting my drum hardware at rehearsal. It took me 20 years to actually do it.

Something is always forgotten

I play drums. If you've never packed up a drum kit: 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, more than once, even for an out-of-state gig. Drove the whole way; no cymbals. Floor tom legs. Had the tom, no legs. The list goes on.

Adding a vocal monitor rig made it worse: mic cord, adapters, power cord. The list of things to forget kept growing.

Checklists are a thing, Phil

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 never made the standard list, so they got forgotten anyway. And every time I went to reuse the checklist, I had to uncheck everything first. And doing so wiped out the record of what I'd actually packed last time.

That bugged me for two decades.

Enter Reuse Lists

I wanted a checklist I could use over and over. For most of those 20 years I kept designing around "templates" — make a template, then create a checklist from it. Around year 18, the unlock: I didn't need the template. The list I was looking at is the template.

How it 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. Bonus: the old one becomes a record of what actually happened. Reuse the new one and the cycle continues. Pin a favorite as a fresh starting point you can always come back to. Updates flow forward, the old ones don't change. Version control for checklists, without anyone thinking about version control.

It's a thing now

Reuse Lists is live. Free tier to try it. Pro is $9/month or $89/year if it ends up living in your routine. I shipped collaboration last week, so you can share a list with someone. Packing for a trip together, partner restocking the diaper bag, that kind of thing.

The idea I've had for 20 years is finally out of my head and into the world. If you've ever made a checklist and then either remade it from scratch or uncheck-spammed your way through it, I built this for you.

$2 tip: that idea you've had for years? The one that feels too simple to be worth building? It's probably exactly the right thing to build.