Keeping reference material in a filing cabinet

What matters here

• Durable and independent of any software
• Private by default
• Labels reflect the day you filed, not today
• No search, so retrieval is guesswork
• Only accessible in one place

What cabinets still do well

Anything legal, original or proof-of-ownership belongs in paper. Signed contracts, certificates and notarized documents have a physical authority that a scan does not replace.

The label problem

You file by the words that made sense then: a client name, a year, a project code. Two years later you search by the words that make sense now. A one-line index note in a searchable place solves it.

Index outside the cabinet

Keep a simple list of what is in each drawer with a short description. It takes an hour once and turns the cabinet from a memory test into a lookup.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Collecting gift ideas in a phone noteA running note of gift ideas is one of the few lists that gets better the longer it sits. It needs two things: capture anywhere and a reminder before the date.
• How do I organize a thesis?A thesis is a long project where the writing and the reading have to stay connected. Most of the difficulty is keeping the argument visible while the material grows.
• Is my note data portable?Portability depends on two things: whether you can export, and whether the export is readable without the app. Both are worth checking before you invest years of notes.