Let's get organized! Or not . . .

I got a new Levenger catalog in the mail today with a cover blurb touting "60 NEW Organizing Solutions." How, I wondered, could there be 60 new organizing solutions in there? So I checked, but the only "new" things seem to be the colors stuff comes in; no miraculous gizmos or methods for making one's life simpler or less cluttered. Just the opposite. Levenger is big on the 3x5 card method for taking notes, and for a mere $138, you can purchase a letter-size 3x5 Zip Action Folio (junior size, $98; $6 extra for monogram, $12 if you want your whole name). This thing is filled with card-sized pockets that hold 3x5 cards, which, once this treasure is in your hands, will be jotted on and arranged thus and so, and perhaps so and thus.

Just thinking about this kind of thing makes me want to lie down in a dim room with a lavender-scented hankie. I used to try to devise systems to keep track of stuff, but none of the Big Guns (Franklin, DayTimer, DayRunner, or Levenger) could overcome my natural inertia. In the ancient past, when I worked in the Reference Dept. of Shields Library, before all of us got so bloody busy that we needed more stuff to help us keep track of our stuff, I kept a steno notebook that I'd write in. Every day, I wrote the date, then whatever I needed to remember or keep track of got written down. Didn't matter where I started on the page, and when the book got filled up on one side, I flipped it over and started on the back side. The cover got the start and end dates. Worked fine, best system I ever had, and cheap cheap cheap.