My wife, whenever she needs to keep something safe, always says she is putting it into a safe place so that it will be there when she needs it again. Unfortunately she can never remember where the safe place is when she needs whatever she put into that safe place. She one time pounded a nail into the frame around the door so she could hang her car keys there. For a year she forgot about that nail and she had to get a duplicate of her car keys. They were hanging on that nail for an entire year undisturbed.

We are always finding tidbits of information when we scour newspapers and books. Information that we need to save. Where do we put this information so that we'll always be able to find it when we needs it? I have tried creating special folders in my Windows Explorer and then copying and pasting this information into documents and saving them in the folder I created but I don't use MS Word so I cannot just double click on a document and it opens. Instead I need to open my Openoffice and then choose file, open, and point to the exact file I want to open. This just takes too much of my time.

I could print out all the documents I need and then assemble all these documents in a file folder which I could store in a special drawer of my desk. Weren't we told that computers were supposed to eliminate all this need for paper? Seems like we have a lot more of it these days.

don't you hate in when you realize that the solution has been right in front of you the entire time? I used to store a lot of information in my CRM software like Act or Goldmine but there is a much easier way that also will cost a lot less. We all have Email software like either Outlook or Outlook Express, correct? I am sure that other Email applications will allow us to do the same thing. In your email application choose create a new email. In the subject line you can paste the info that you want to keep track of. If there isn't enough room in the subject then just put the majority of the information in the email body. Then choose File, Then Save As, and save this email as a draft.

You can even save photos this way by just putting the photo in the body of an email and then saving it as a draft which will then allow you to access everything by just going to your Drafts folder. I put so much in this folder, phone messages, pictures, notes, etc... Once every month or so I go back to this folder and delete anything I no longer need saves.

This simple Drafts folder is so simplistic yet it helps me to store and retrieve so much.