Filing Oblivion

I pride myself on how organized I can be at times.  Keeping an inventory of household assets, carefully managing financial paperwork, creating audit trails, maintaining timely and accurate legal paperwork, and even backing up important electronic files. 

Yet - when it's time to find something (like a user manual; or serial number) the location of that precise data is an exercise of futility.   At home, Susan and I have four filing cabinets full of data; desk drawers full of files; at my office I have six filing locations (with piles of files on the floor); in the attic box after box of files; and that is only the physical files.  Electronically I have every type of media - floppys; CD's; Jazz Drives; Hard drives; and memory sticks. 

So when I wanted to find the cost of a oriental rug we acquired in 2002 I was out of luck.  All that data was somewhere in filing oblivion.

The only benefit of searching for something is you find what you endlessly looked for (and gave up on) the last time.