Laundry Warning Light

A lot of things have indicators to let you know that you're almost out.  For example, the receipt roll at stores generally has a pink bar pattern as you get to the end of the roll.  Your smoke detector is really good about letting you know when batteries run low.  Our cars even have a light that comes on when we start running low on gas.  Wouldn't it be cool if we had something like that at our houses to let us know we were low on certain supplies?  

Here are a couple of ways to build in your own "low supply indicators"

• Laundry:  Check each family member's sock and underwear drawer to see what their supply looks like.  Make sure that you have fewer pairs of underwear and/or socks than anyone else.  Designate (or buy) a particular pair of underwear as your "laundry light" pair and make sure to always put it on the bottom of the underwear stack.  When you pull that one out of the drawer, you know you need to do laundry!  If you've got fewer pairs than anyone else in the family, they'll never run short on shorts again because you were able to step in and take action before they ran out.  
• Toilet Paper/Paper Towels: Put a square of red masking tape or write "BUY MORE" on a roll almost at the end of the stack. When that roll comes out of the pantry add toilet paper or paper towels to the shopping list.  

I'm going to check around the house this week to see what other items lend themselves to "Low Supply" warnings.  Any ideas?