I’m still working on mine but in essence the difference between this and the digital filing system is that this one takes up space and you can’t randomly search for what you are looking for by typing into a search box. Or can you?
You can, but first, you have to organize everything into physical locations.
The physical locations can be made up of filing folder boxes/cabinets, plastic totes with tops and shelving for placement of these boxes and totes.
You can box everything up into different categories (Daniel Levitin goes into depth in his book The Organized Mind) or you can check out Marie Kondo tidying on Netflix for ideas. Let’s keep it simple – cables go with cables, paints with paints, art paint brushes with art paintbrushes, etc.
So how do you use a search box to go through your physical inventory?
You label each of those boxes and then start a filing system on an excel spreadsheet that you can access from anywhere… your phone, your laptop, your desktop, someone else’s desktop you borrowed. Everything is in the cloud and if you don’t have access to excel spreadsheets then use the free stuff: google forms or your IOS numbers app on your iPhone. Then you can file everything you own and create several information entries as well (price, day you bought it, did you lend it out?, to who?)
That’s a physical organization system that I’m still bringing to life in my world but hopefully it shares my perspective on how important organization is to creativity. This physical system should be simple an easy to add to at any point.
The end. Next series coming up.