Memory Palace- lists

In class, we've talked about how we can memorize words by pairing it with a place we know really well. I read Brianna's blog about memorizing her passage from FW and I remembered a book I read last year called "The Madonnas of Leningrad." It goes back and forth through time, but the idea is that she is losing her short-term memory while living (or re-living) her experiences during WWII. She worked in a museum in Russia, but she and the other workers took the paintings down and sent them somewhere for safekeeping. To help herself cope with the hardships of the war, she remembers where all the paintings were in the museum (she was a tour guide for the paintings). She not only remembers where they all were in the museum, but she also remembers the stories behind them. She has a whole building of paintings in her head that she takes with her forever.
I think the idea is neat; and I like to attribute memories to things I have in my room- like I keep silly things, because they remind me of some point in my lifetime, but when it comes to remembering passages or lists, I rely on either drilling repetition or I make it into a song or it actually doesn't have to be a song, it just has to have a rhythm. I could tell you the phone numbers of my friends in elementary school, because we made them into songs. I know all the counties in Idaho, all 44, because we had to sing them in 4th grade to the tune, 1 little, 2 little Indians or whatever. The United States song- Fifty-Nifty, names all the states in alphabetical order. I know the verbs of being. These are the lists I remember from elementary school, and they really don't mean anything to me (except the Idaho counties. . . I know where every license plate is from), but I know them anyway. I think my words have a kind of rhythm, but I still don't quite have it down yet. It's just a work in progress.