Before I had a computer, I used a filing system invented by Daryl Hoole, the homemaking and organizing queen of Mormondom.  She wrote a book called “The Art of Homemaking” that every Mormon mom studied and lived by.  In it, she taught us a filing system.  It started with a file box full of file cards, arranged alphabetically by topic or author. For every item filed, you filled out a line on a card describing the item to be filed. That item was given a consecutive number and filed in that order in hanging files in our large filing cabinet. Index cards kept my life organized.

Libraries were not much different, I grew up with card catalogues, where every book in the library was listed on an index card with a number that corresponded to where that book could be found on the library shelves.

Today I went through 3 drawers of filed things, almost everything was quite dated and no longer important, or available online.  Before materials were digitized, we’d copy articles or talks or news reports and save them in our files for future reference.  Going through these files was like opening a time capsule from the 1990s.

In this move, I have uncovered 100s and 100s of index cards, waiting to be used. I have no use for them anymore. Now those little paper cards have joined other old  and outdated technology, no longer of use.

I didn’t take a pic of the numbered files before throwing everything away, but here is one of the other drawers filled with my once important stuff.