So as mentioned in my twist tie art post I buy a lot of gadgets. Cell phones, palm pilots, cameras, video cards, motherboards, label makers, automatic kitty litter boxes…. If it’s a gadget that doesn’t suck, I’m your audience. Well, this leads to a problem. All these things come with instructions booklets, adapters, driver CDs, screen covers, receipts, and a bunch of other crap. Now, I know that I could keep the CDs in one place, and the adapters with all my other cables and crap, but I’m finding that with enough time of this stuff spending in a drawer, the less common cables and adapters can lose their association in my mind as to what they are for. CDs disappear into the living mound of junk on my desk, instruction booklets go missing, and forget about the receipts.

Well, this problem has a rather simple and elegant solution that my father showed me a few months ago. What you will need:

I suspect the solution is fairly obvious based on the list of materials. With every item you purchase that has more then one related item (receipt, cables, instructions, etc) whip out a clasp envelope, write the name of the object on the face of the envelope, and then stick the whole thing in your filing cabinet/file box. This has a number of benefits. First off, it keeps everything that is related together, and these envelopes can normally fit everything that comes with most gadgets. Second, they are just over 8 1/2 x 11, so they can pretty much fit in any filing cabinet either as their own files, or in a thicker handing folder. Third, do you really need to fill your CD cases with a bunch of driver CDs that you use at most what? *maybe* two, three times….*ever*. Fourth when you are done with the object, this makes it really easy to sell/give it away/freecycle it.

Since I have started doing this, it’s really helped tame my office, hope it helps tame yours.