Prep and Boil questions

SWMBO is going quilting tomorrow, it will be raining, so I'm brewing. Just wondering how some of you handle a couple of things. One, do you clean and sanitize carboy, measuring tools, etc. ahead of time, like the day before or do you do that on brewday? Also do you keep a lid on your kettle during the boil or do you just let it steam away? If it matters, I brew outside under a covered patio.

I have an ongoing starsan solution I keep in an empty carboy. On brew day I shake the hell out of it with a cap on to sanitize the carboy completely. I then pour it into a bucket and recap the sanitized carboy. Then I sanitize everything in the bucket up until right before I use it. Also, anything used during the boil doesn't need to be sanitized.

As far as boiling with a lid...you can do it but there is a very high probability it will boil over. I leave mine off and just factor in evaporation loss. This way you can let it boil and take care of other things (bottling/racking previous batch, prepping for chilling, watching football...etc.) during the boil.

Lid off to let the dms escape. And the boil off lets your smaller original gravity thicken up to the finish gravity.
You can cover/wrap sanitized stuff in clear wrap ahead of time.

you should sanitize ferms. and tools the day your brewing so you have fresh solution with less cross contaimination,and the solution wont take as much dirt from the air while sitting for those long hours, and !!!!never cover your boil kettle!!! you'll boil over just about 99% of the time, and you will have DMS (cooked vegtable) and Diacetly (buttery) flavors, with an uncovered vigorous boil you'll scrub most of the precursors that produce these off flavors. This way the yeast will be able to scrub out the rest during the final stage of the primary fermentation and clean up the flavor.

I never leave my boil kettle unattended for more than a couple of minutes. I have boiled with a cocked lid and without with no noticeable difference in evaporation rate or finished taste, but I'll take the advice and leave the lid off from now on. I guess I was just worried about UFO's in my beer. As far as the prep stuff goes, I was just trying to shorten brew day a bit. It can be a bear sometimes.

I brew outside too and I just picked up one of those round screens normally used to keep grease splatters under control. I'm hoping that will help keep my UFO's out of the brew pot.

Well, the day started off bad... roof is leaking, again.... or still. Ain't no way I'm going up on that roof in the rain. I brewed up a batch of Bell's Two Hearted (I hope). All indications OG, color, taste, etc. point to a good batch. Even cleanup wasn't so bad today. Used hop bags for all 3 doses and had no trouble racking thru my mesh screen funnel.