The problem I've had with memory palaces is that I find it hard to keep multiple versions of a scene separate from each other. I also find it tedious to come up with the scenes themselves. Mnemonics are the difficult part.

Derren Browne explains as way to memorize a deck of playing cards by assigning mnemonics to cards and creating a story with them. I found it somewhat ease. Memorising the cards by themselves is tedious. "Jack of diamonds... wait, no, was it hearts?" There are too many similar cards. So you turn each card into a 100% unique mnemonic using a reversible method. He used a combination of the peg numerical system (1=l, 2=n, 3=m etc) and the first letter of the suit (h=heart, s=spade etc) to come up with a single meme for each card. For picture cards, use characters or people who match up. Queen of hearts might be your wife. King of clubs might be a famous MC or rapper. This gives you 52 items like:

Queen Latifa: queen of clubs

Ham: 3 of hearts

Elon Musk: Jack of diamonds

Car: 4 of clubs

Dog: 9 of diamonds

All you need to do, as you're memorising the order of the deck, is to create a narrative around the individual cards. "Queen Latifa is eating ham with Elon Musk in her car. Her dog is on her lap begging". There's no way you're going to get the cards wrong, or the order. The first time I ever tried it, it took me about 30 minutes to invent or memorise existing card pictures. Once I tried to use it I successfully remembered 25 cards in a row. Surprisingly, I could recite them backwards or name any card that came before or after any card chosen from the deck. Our brains are very good at remembering stories.

It's funny, the memory palace idea always seemed like such an odd concept to me, until I realized I have aphantasia and lack the "normal" visualization capabilities.

I have heard people who lack strong visualization are still able to get some utility out of it by verbally elaboratively encoding the thing rather than visually encoding it.

Totally. I did something along those lines as a kid to memorize the first 30 digits of pi. Basically coming up with an elaborate story and committing it to memory.

>coming up with an elaborate story and committing it to memory

I've tried a few of these, including the one in Derren's book. I have to say, none of it worked. Over the course of trying to remember 20 places of pi by various methods, I ended up committing it to memory too, but, and here's the important part, I do not remember them now. I think remembering different things benefit from using different techniques, and we just use the right one unconsciously, there's not a single method you can impose on all memory tasks.

same. I remember the bottles of wine, scuba diver and claudia schiffer swimming in cottage cheese or something like that. Socks on the living room couch?