Only the Lonely Notebook

It is difficult to imagine a person who is less adept at both technological matters and self-promotion than your Betsy. In a slam to feminists everywhere, I scream for my menfolk the minute I encounter a frozen computer screen or an unruly mouse. Given its reliance on computing thingies, blogging comes only slightly more naturally to me than does tap dancing. Nor am I much for begging people to read me. Yet I realize that if I remain my only reader for much longer, my time would be better spent telling my stories to myself while I fold laundry. Therefore, with this post I am stepping out of my comfort zone by participating in Works for Me Wednesday, a weekly tipfest involving both technology and Emptying Our Nest promotion sponsored by the kind hostess of Rocks in My Dryer.

Comical as it may seem, I occasionally have a stroke of organizational genius, and one of them is this: The Notebook. Every few months I grab several cheap-cheap-cheap full-size spiral notebooks at the grocery. That's where everything, and I mean everything, goes. Need some Comet and a couple of shallots? I write them on the running grocery list. Need to remember the confirmation number for our rental car
reservation? I jot it down in the same notebook. Want to drive myself insane with a list of everything I need to do for the next six months? I put it in the notebook.

The key to this is to USE ONLY ONE NOTEBOOK AT A TIME. This is based on the amazing organizational principle that it is easier to keep up with one of something than several of something. (You have perhaps noticed this when you take children to the mall.) When you fill one notebook up, start another, but keep the old one and put dates on the front of it. That way, next year when you need to remember the name of the gutter-cleaner-outer you heard about last week, and all you can remember is that you heard it around the same time you gave the cast party, and you know that was in February, you'll have a general idea where to look. If you are tidy, perhaps you could put the notebook in a special Home for Notebooks. That, however, is not the Bird way. Mine stay in the Notebook Pile, which is right next to the Newspaper Articles to be Clipped Pile on top of the desk in the kitchen. All I know is It Works for Me.