Who was that plumber we liked two years ago?
Lost the number for that plumber you liked? Save trusted contractors with one voice note, find them later by typing what they did.
Who Was That Plumber We Liked Two Years Ago?
The water under the sink isn't a leak yet, but it's clearly going to be. You remember, vaguely, that a couple of years back, you had a plumber come fix the upstairs bathroom and he was great. Reasonable price. Showed up on time. Cleaned up after himself. Even left a card on the kitchen counter. You absolutely told yourself you'd remember him.
You cannot remember him. Not his name, not his company name, not his number. You scroll your phone contacts and don't see anything. You search your texts for "plumber" and find one thread from your sister-in-law about her own plumbing nightmare. You check your email for invoices and Venmo for the payment, and after 20 minutes of digging you give up and start typing "plumber near me" into Google. You'll roll the dice with whoever has the most reviews.
This is the same loop that runs Every Time We Have a House Sitter and you re-type the same twelve instructions. The good answer existed once and isn't where you can grab it.
This is the version of forgetting that costs the most. A good contractor is gold, anyone who's owned a home long enough has been burned by a bad one, and yet most of us have no system at all for keeping track of who we liked. Research on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve points the same direction here: people lose a large share of new information within hours of hearing it, so a name said once at the door is mostly gone before the invoice clears.
Why does contractor memory fail?
There are a handful of reasons we lose track of the people we trust to come into our homes.
The contact never gets saved properly. They text you to confirm an appointment. You text back. Six months later, your text history has thousands of messages, and there's no contact saved with their name, just a number with no context.
They have a generic name. "Mike's Plumbing." "Joe the Handyman." "AAA Heating." If you do save them, the name doesn't tell you what they specialize in or whether you actually liked them.
You don't think to save them. When the work is done, you're just relieved it's over. You pay them, you say thanks, and you move on. Saving the number for next time isn't on your mind.
You move. Even if you do build up a list of trusted people, when you move to a new city the list resets. You start over.
The system, if there is one, is scattered. Maybe you saved the plumber to contacts but the painter is in a Notes app and the electrician is on a Post-it on the fridge. When you need any of them, you have to remember which silo they're in.
This is one of the most expensive forms of memory loss because the alternative, going back to Google, sifting reviews, calling strangers, produces uneven results. The plumber you liked was a known quantity. The new one is a coin flip. Same dynamic eats the Restaurant Someone Recommended Three Weeks Ago.
What do people try, and why does it not stick?
The contacts app. This is the most common solution. You save "Mike Plumber" with a number. It works for getting hold of him again, but it doesn't store any of the texture: what he charged, what he fixed, whether you'd use him again, or whether your spouse hated him.
A spreadsheet. A few highly organized people maintain a Google Sheet of household contacts. It's good when it exists, but the activation energy to start one, and to actually update it, keeps most people from sustaining it. Home-improvement subreddits are full of threads asking how to keep this list, with no consensus answer that anyone actually maintains for more than a few months.
Recommendations from neighbors. This is great for finding new contractors, but doesn't help you remember the ones you've already used. And neighborhood recommendations have to be fresh; the guy your neighbor recommended five years ago may have retired.
Memory. This is what most people rely on, and it's why we end up Googling at 9pm.
The pattern is the same one we see across productivity systems that fail to stick: the work to enter information has to be lighter than the cost of forgetting. For contractors, the cost of forgetting is high (you re-pick a stranger), but the cost of saving them in a structured way feels even higher in the moment, so we don't do it.
And there's a sneakier failure mode: the contractor who was great two years ago for one specific thing. Your tile guy was incredible, but you only used him once, for one bathroom. When the kitchen backsplash project comes around, you've completely forgotten his name because you didn't form a regular relationship. One-off pros are the most likely to be lost, and often the most worth keeping.
What do you actually want to remember about a contractor?
If you sit down and ask, "what do I need to know about a contractor I liked?", it's more than just a phone number.
- Their name and the name of their business
- What kind of work they do (plumbing, but also: do they do gas lines? bathrooms? new construction?)
- The phone number or email they prefer
- The date they last worked for you
- What they did and what it cost
- Whether they were great, fine, or hire-as-a-last-resort
- Any specific notes ("prefers Venmo," "likes a 24-hour heads-up," "his apprentice is also good")
- Their service area, if you ever moved or think about it for a friend
This is exactly the kind of textured, mostly-narrative information that doesn't fit neatly into the contacts app or a spreadsheet but is trivially easy to write as a sentence.
How does dEssence replace the spreadsheet?
dEssence is a free personal memory with three co-equal save surfaces: the Chrome extension, the Telegram bot, and the web app at dessence.ai. No folders, no tags, no organizing. It's memory you don't have to maintain.
The first time a contractor does good work, the handyman, the plumber, the painter, the electrician, voice-message yourself the name, the number, the job, and what you paid. Use whichever surface is closest: click the dEssence icon in the Chrome extension on their website, forward a message to the Telegram bot, or paste into the web app at dessence.ai. Two years later, when the same pipe leaks, you ask in your own words: "the plumber who fixed the kitchen sink" and his number comes up. Save it, forget it, ask for it later.
For contractors, the habit is one quick send after they leave. Open the Chrome extension, the Telegram bot, or the web app, voice-note or type something like: "Mike Patterson, Patterson Plumbing, 555-123-4567, fixed the master bath leak today. Came on time, charged $280, would absolutely use again. Lives in our zip code." Hit send. Maybe 25 seconds.
Next time anything plumbing-related comes up, you ask in your own words. "Who was the plumber we liked?" "What was the name of the guy who fixed the bathroom?" "Plumber recommendation." Any phrasing finds the same record, because recall works by meaning, not exact keywords.
The useful part is that it also works in fuzzy ways. If your friend texts asking for a plumber recommendation, just ask "good plumber in our area" and forward the answer. If you're vetting a new electrician, search "who did the panel work last year" for a comparison point. Same fuzzy retrieval fixes Someone Told Me About a Great Dermatologist.
It also extends naturally. The same memory holds your handyman, your HVAC tech, your tree guy, your house cleaner, your painter, your carpet cleaner, your dog walker, the lawn service, and the kid down the street who shovels snow. One search, "snow removal", gets you the kid's number, even if you saved it three winters ago.
A related habit: when a friend recommends a contractor, save it immediately, even before you've used them. "Sarah recommended Apex Roofing, redid her roof in 2024 for $14k, really professional." Months later, when your roof starts leaking, you don't text Sarah and admit you forgot. You search "roof recommendation" and there it is.
Honest about the rough edges: dEssence is in beta, the paid tier (Pro, around $9/month) isn't finalized yet, and there's no native iOS or Android app: capture works through the Chrome extension, the Telegram bot, and the web app at dessence.ai. No team features either, this is a personal memory layer, not a shared workspace.
Why does this compound over time?
The useful feature isn't that it works once. It's that it works better the longer you use it. After a year of saving the people you hire, you have a personal directory of trusted local pros that you could not assemble from a public reviews site. A typical homeowner cycles through plumbing, HVAC, electrical, lawn, and handyman work over a year, so after three or four years you have a personal directory that no public listing can match.
This pairs well with the related habit of saving warranty info and receipts when something breaks. When the dishwasher dies, you can pull up both the receipt (to check the warranty) and the appliance repair guy's number from the same place. Or, when you remember the paint colors you used, you can also find the painter who used them.
And unlike a spreadsheet, the entries don't have to be uniform. Some entries are just a name and number. Others are a paragraph of context. The record reads back what you saved and gives you what's relevant.
Frequently asked questions
What if I move? Do I have to start over?
The old contractors stay searchable, useful for friends in your old area, or for a contractor who travels. For your new city, you start a new layer. Within a year you'll have a fresh local list. You can also message a friend in your old neighborhood, ask "who was that plumber I told you about?", and find the answer.
Do I need to save my contractors all at once?
No. Save them as you go. Each time you hire someone, or remember someone you used, add them. After a few months, the list is substantial without you ever scheduling a "contractor list" project.
What if I only used them once and don't remember details?
Save whatever you have. Even "Mike, plumber, fixed leak in 2023, was good" is worth more than nothing. You can always add to an entry later.
Can my spouse access the same list?
Yes. Many couples share one dEssence account for household stuff, so either of you can find the painter or HVAC tech regardless of who originally saved them.
What if a contractor was bad? Should I save them too?
Yes, write a sentence about why. "DON'T USE, left huge mess and overcharged." Future-you will thank present-you when their truck pulls up next door and you can't quite remember why the name sounded familiar.
Can I keep notes on contractors I am vetting but have not hired yet?
Yes. Save the quotes, the reviews, what each one said about timeline and price. When you pick one, the comparison data is right there. And if you don't pick one this time but the project comes up again, you've already done half the legwork.
Stop re-picking strangers every time
Next time someone does work on your house, even a one-off, even a guy your friend referred, take 30 seconds before you forget. Click the dEssence Chrome extension, forward a note to the Telegram bot, or paste into the web app at dessence.ai. Voice-note their name, their number, what they did, what it cost, and whether you'd use them again. Send.