It used to be that the "find files" or "search" option on a personal computer, or in an email program, wasn't very good. Remember?
Cue the wayback machine. Once upon a time, if you had a lot of documents and you wanted to be able to pull up an old one quickly, you'd better have your documents folder organized. Folders within folders: Spreadsheets > taxes > 1994. Or at least you should be good about putting enough details in the filename that you could pick it out of a lineup. Remember that? It was especially hard back when you had to name a file in eight characters or less. (Now I'm really getting nostalgic.)
Not so anymore, right? (Except maybe for photos, which as of this moment aren't very searchable unless you name them carefully.) Here in 2011, if I want to find some old document on my Mac's hard drive, I type a few words into the search field, and it appears. Knowing the filename may help; often it doesn't matter because the search terms can come from the contents. I don't have to remember if I called it "new grocery list" or "shopping items" or "Highway 7 Cub Foods" — if I type "triscuits" I'll find what I'm looking for.
So now I don't spend a lot of time dragging files (except photos) in and out of folders just so I can "find" them later, or thinking carefully in which folder to save a particular file. I occasionally group documents for some other reason — such as uploading related files simultaneously — but not for retrieving them. I save most files right into the default "Documents" folder, and I trust the operating system to search for it if I ever need it again.
Makes you wish you had a search engine for paper, doesn't it?
Some time ago I needed to get some information from the list of covered items in one of our insurance policies. I didn't need the information particularly quickly, but it was important. The insurance policies are something that Mark, rather than I, usually deals with, so I went upstairs to the desk where Mark pays the bills, and started looking. I checked the filing cabinet first — not there — then started going through the stacks and baskets of documents and papers on the desk. I expected it would take me a while, fifteen minutes or so, but I wasn't worried, for several reasons:
- I wasn't actually in a hurry
- I was motivated to find the policy, so I knew I wouldn't give up
- I knew I would recognize it the instant I uncovered it
- and I knew it was here somewhere, in one of the piles.
And I did find it. I copied down the information I needed, left the policy where I found it and went off to do my work.
So the piles … worked.
+ + +
That was on a day when there were a lot of tall piles on and around the desk. Sometimes they're fairly well corralled:
The filing system will never get that upstairs home office a photo shoot in House Beautiful or Real Simple.
They sometimes look as if there's nothing systematic about it.
And it's too bad that they cover up the beautiful built-in desk tops that Mark built to fit perfectly into the tiny niche at the end of the hall.
But the truth is that whatever state they're in, they function adequately for us as a document-retrieval system. Here's why:
First of all, we rarely need to find any of that stuff quickly. In fact, we rarely need to find anything in there at all. Especially now that so much information is stored electronically, of all the paper we have to save, most is there only "just in case" we need to look at it or produce it later, not because we expect to need to refer to it often. Tax documents from one to five years ago. Insurance policy numbers and coverage information. Our college transcripts. None of that stuff needs to be at our fingertips. I can count on one hand the number of times I, personally, needed to search for a document in that office in the last two years. I assume Mark has some system for keeping track of the tiny fraction of files up there that are active for him. (I keep "my" stuff somewhere else. This is probably a key feature!)
Second, there isn't a whole lot of junk there diluting the important things. Oh, there's some things in the "maybe we should save this" category, but Mark's pretty good about recycling paper we won't need. So the stacks aren't so large and stuffed full of irrelevant material that I know it'll take forever to find something. It will take minutes. It will not take hours.
Third, when he or I puts a file in a stack up there, it stays put until he decides to do something with it. The papers in the stacks are safe there, or at least, safe enough for us. The upstairs office, tucked at the end of a hall, is out of the way of daily living; the stacks do not get knocked over, nor do they accumulate much irrelevant junk. I do not mess with the stuff except to look for things from time to time. The children know they are not to touch "Dad's papers." So, to put it succinctly, if it's up there, we know if it's there somewhere.
Fourth, it's easy to put a document into the system, because it doesn't much matter exactly where it goes. And that's important, because all the documents have to get into the system. On top of the nearest pile is good enough, or in my case, into a particular wire basket downstairs that serves as an "in-box" from me to him.
(Note wire basket inbox, containing — besides mail — Chapstick, a bicycle headlamp, the packaging from his new heart rate monitor, and always — always — several screwdrivers)
(If your husband's household inbox does not have room for random screwdrivers, then there's a big part of your problem right there, I'll bet)
(Because there's also no search engine for screwdrivers yet)
(No comment shall be made on any similarities that might be found between the stacks upstairs on the desk shelves and the stacks of recipe books on the kitchen shelves)
Ahem. So the system, though not pretty, works. The basic reason why conventional organization isn't necessary here — and maybe would even be a hindrance — is that, given the kind of files we keep, quick and easy file storage is much more important than quick and easy file retrieval.
If you want to find something, it must still exist somewhere. If you don't put it away promptly, an important document might sit around in an unsafe place — like the kitchen counter or a schoolroom table — long enough to get damaged or lost. Putting it away where it's safe is obviously a prerequisite. But it has to be easy. If it was a lot of trouble to put a document into the system, chances are that we would procrastinate on the filing. There just isn't much intrinsic motivation to proper filing.
Even if, like me, you already own a really cool label maker.
On the other hand, if I need to find something, well, that is a fairly strong intrinsic motivation. I trust I'll be motivated to riffle through the piles of paper until I uncover the one I'm looking for.
So it's okay that it takes a while to find something. It's not okay if it takes a while to put something away.
(This is not true for every household or every function — but it happens to be true for mine.)
If it obeys this rule, an untidy system works. It might even work better than if it were tidy, because keeping it tidy — just so I might be able to find something a few minutes more quickly later — would cost us time. I'm not sure that time would be a good investment.
+ + +
When I realized this basic need, it changed our paper-handling in two important ways.
First, I stopped bugging Mark to clean up the papers on the desk. The system works, and at least until we decide we need to clear more space for writing, there isn't a reason to find a different place for the piles.
Second, it opened my eyes to how I, personally, handle paper — and many other items — in the homeschool.
More on that in another post.
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