A Look On The Lighter Side: To file or not to file, that is the question

Judy Epstein

I’ve just read an article in The New York Times about the benefits of old-fashioned filing cabinets, by Pamela Paul.

Paul describes the act of acquiring one’s own filing cabinet as a rite of passage — “part of becoming a grown-up. It was no longer Mom’s job to keep track of your life’s paperwork. It was on you.”

When I got my first apartment in Manhattan, I bought myself a filing cabinet, too. But it wasn’t all that serious. It was bright blue and had only two short drawers — nothing like the tall, four-drawer mountain of a thing that my parents had in their home. When someone was done with one of the drawers, you could hear the low thunder of the drawer rolling back—then the satisfying “click-thunk” as it fell into place.

My mom was super organized. She labeled every file — “School Conferences,” “School Pictures,” “Warranties” and every file contained only what it said it did. When my brothers and I recently moved her to someplace smaller, we each took the files with our own names on them (“Judy’s Report Cards” “Judy’s Camp Letters” “Judy’s Nobel Prize paperwork”) and there were only a few other files to go through. It was pretty easy to deal with it all.

This will most definitely not be the case when my children have to move me.

And they know it.

Recently, I had a discussion — OK, an argument — about this with one of my sons. He maintained that life could be simplified by scanning all the photos we have.

“How does that help?” I demanded to know. “Then I have the scan and the picture — that’s more stuff, not less.”

“Then you throw out the picture!”

“Ackkk!” I was speechless with horror.

A few cups of coffee later, I decided I must educate my son.

“Sweetie, have I told you that before you were born, I worked on documentaries with lots of archival film and photos?”

“Yes, Mom, at least a thousand times.” He sounded bored, but I’m sure he was just pretending.

“So maybe you remember me saying how there was always more information in the physical photo than you could ever hope to capture in any scan. Sometimes — in the oldest ones — there was more resolution in the silver nitrate than our digital cameras could reproduce. Sometimes something important was written on the back. And if all else fails, if it’s super important, you might someday be able to carbon date the paper or cardboard.… but not if somebody’s trigger-happy child has shredded it all.”

“I don’t think your photographs go far enough back for carbon dating, Mom — unless you’re really a fossil? Besides, you’re mixing your metaphors — there’s no trigger here.”

“You don’t think so? Just talk about throwing out photos again and see what happens!”

“OK, OK, never mind that. I’m only trying to help you get rid of stuff.”

“Just promise me you won’t do that to my photos!”

“I promise,” he said. But I’m not absolutely sure he meant it.

“Besides,” I continued, “whatever digital storage you use is bound to be obsolete before you are. They keep changing formats, and who wants to keep up with that for stuff you’re not even using? Then suddenly it’s five formats later, and no one can open the file. Remember floppy disks? Useless already. Whereas photos and films and books from decades ago are still completely usable.”

“How do you know so much about formats?” my husband wanted to know.

“I read about it in this article.”

“In the paper?”

“Actually, it was in the comments,” I said slowly. “Which, ironically, only exist in the electronic version.”

Even more ironically, I suddenly realized that my entire career in television had coincided with the switch-over, in most places, from film to video—yet now it seems that film was more trustworthy than anything electronic. Indeed, I recall reading a few years ago that the National Archives had decided that the best way to store video sound and picture was 35 millimeter film.

None of which is helping me with my filing cabinet.

Unless I put it all on film.

I can see it now: “Welcome to Judy Epstein’s Philosophy 101 Course Notes. Does a dog have being in itself? Or for itself? What the heck is the difference? Use additional paper as necessary….”

Hmmm.…that’s one bag that can go to the trash. See, kids? I can throw something out, after all!

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