Visual cues for easier setup

[Snaps]

This ended up being longer than I intended... TL;DR: I do some things to try to make my setup idiot-proof. What do you do?

I’m a fan of making things easy on myself. In fact, if I give myself the opportunity to screw something up, I will, and so I need to try to eliminate those opportunities where I can.

With that in mind, there are a few things I do with my hammock gear to protect me from myself.

For ease in setting up, I color-code everything. Head red, shoe blue. My hammock CLs are color-coded Amsteel. My UQ suspension has red and blue cordage and mini-biners. On double-ended stuff sacks and my catch-all sack, anything for which the head/foot orientation matters, I put red and blue cordage.

I don’t remove my bugnet often, so I don’t color-code that... but yesterday I set up my Double Dutch bugnet and realized I could easily get that wrong if I don’t pay attention, so I put red zipper pulls on one side (seam down) and orange pulls on the other. Red, in addition to being my head end, also ends up indicating my right side. Chameleon bugnets, I realized, can be zipped on four different ways, with 50/50 odds of getting it wrong (which means I would get it wrong 90% of the time). To help me along, I stick to a convention.

For zippers I don’t want to pull—like the one between my Chameleon and Sidecar—I remove the corded zipper pulls altogether. I leave the metal tabs, but when I look at them now, sitting there unadorned, a voice in my head says “NO!”

I keep my tarp tie-outs on my stakes these days. Red tie-outs are standard-length. Orange tie-outs are longer, for porch mode. All of the cordage that goes to the ground is reflective so I don’t lose it or trip over it. That includes my shock cord hammock tie-outs.

I have a little ridgeline light that I would lose if it weren’t attached... so it’s attached. 6” of shock cord will keep it connected to my ridgeline organizer until the battery dies, at which point I’ll cut it off, rinse, and repeat.

My tarp doesn’t care which end of it I put my head under, so it is colorless and boring, as is its skin.

Do you do anything creative with colors or have other hints on your hammock setup that I can shamelessly steal?