I overheard someone grumbling about the stacks of paper crowding his workspace and shortly after was able to spend my morning bus ride mulling about a post. Paper has its charms and its limitations. After Rome lost Egypt, scribes apologized for writing on vellum, aka calfskin,* rather than the traditional cellulose-based papyrus. Recently I had some minor legal work done, and as I handed the court’s certified copy to a frisky bureaucrat, he doubted its validity, held it up to the light, snapped a corner, and criticized the lack of rag content in the stock.
Good paper feels like money. Use the good stuff when the message is important. “Whooper” is a reliable brand.
Look for hundred percent rag and neutral pH.
About those stacks: the vertical file was invented in the late nineteenth century, so a stack can be considered a classic way of managing paper. It’s not very effective, though.
Speed of retrieval is what counts with written information. Computers win, hands down, for anything that won’t be important in a hundred years. I have considered spraying certain household principles onto a wall or carving them into a small boulder.
Incoming
paper is in the long run a more urgent health issue than any of the usual scut work thought of as housekeeping. Paper piles up because important messages are on the pages. A pile of important messages quickly becomes a pile of unfocussed anxiety and denial. Open mail the minute it arrives, shred what should be shredded, and route the pages to the person who manages the various topics. Knowing that most of what crosses my workspace is disposable, I don’t hesitate to
circle key words with a bold marker, so I only have to read something once.
This is an area where being lazy and selfish are useful qualities. My relevant daily paper files live flat in a lockable drawer that’s about four inches deep. That’s all the paper there is, except for a two-inch thick archive in a fire safe. The local academic bookstore sells several very efficient filing formats. My current favorite is a hard-sided accordian paper file from the travel notebook specialist stocked with five-in-one style paper file folders.
Late afternoon is a good time to manage clerical chores. I’m brain dead after three and settle in with coffee and a bright interview show to deal with details. Live topics go into live files, window envelopes go into a storage envelope with monthly dividers-the flap is clipped back so I can just stash something into a section.
Once I realized that my paper midden held ticking time bombs, allergens, and a good reserve of old-fashioned fear, I forced myself to read, scan, and digitally file everything that was relevant.
My shredder runneth over.
*The real stuff looks like smooth white blotting paper.
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More after the jump.