I don't use spreadsheets all that often. For the most part I prefer to use text documents for at least the more list-like things you mention in the first post. There's a Table Editor plugin for Sublime I'm trying out that seems to work okay for a nice and lightweight way to structure things into tables, too. I just find most spreadsheet editors too bulky to keep constantly open like that, so they only tend to get used when I need them for something my text editor can't do.