Wednesday, April 19
Today, I spent slightly less than 3 dollars on a little plastic box and some 3x5 index cards. I then tacked a length of string to a shelf on the wall opposite the computer desk, and found a jar of miniature wooden clothespins. (I had to ask Elizabeth. They were in a plastic tub with multicolored squares of felt, dyed wooden beads, pipecleaners, and wooden cutout horses.)
Each card is datestamped for later sorting, and contains one or more of the things I ought to have in mind and usually don't: Tasks I have accepted, people to communicate with, money which should be moving one direction or the other, several root passwords. Cards which might require further action hang to the left of the string.
The little plastic box (not pictured) is intended as long term storage for outdated cards. It may eventually be replaced with a larger container suitable for adding photographs, newspaper clippings, and other detritus.
The index cards bring the count of my important information storage systems to at least 9, also including 20-25 notebooks (primarily a series of Moleskines), p1k3 (both a date-based archive of entries archive of entries and a wiki), a gmail account, a set of unix mailbox files read via mutt, an overflowing cork bulletin board on one wall, 4 sets of bookshelves, and /home/bbearnes on wendigo, my aging home computer.
Other storage is not even remotely systematic: cardboard bank boxes full of college papers, stacks of CD-Rs, audio tapes, the decaying steamer trunk which holds an appreciable percentage of my family's extant historical documentation.
This is not a tenable position.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I can hear mice skittering through the stove and underneath the dishes.