Okay, we all love the bells and whistles, the slick new gear, the cutting-edge idea . . . but, sometimes Low-Tech is just fine. This past weekend, I was reminded of the old Boy Scout maxim, KISS (Keep It Simple, Silly) when my 20-something son, Christian, was visibly excited by a gift of 3×5 cards.
Christian dropped in for dinner this weekend and we gave him the Levenger Note Card Action Board along with an extra set of ToDo Cards. The response overwhelmingly positive.
Mr. Curator first spotted the Levenger 3×5 system for organizing ideas using the Note Card Action Board and ordered it for our son, a first-class list-maker, an Eagle Scout of List Makers. The Note Card Action Board speaks his language.
Christian loves to make lists on scraps of paper in his Germanic-precise handwriting. The kitchen island of his lovely new home is covered with carefully scribed lists. The Levenger Note Card Action Board serves as a launch pad for such lists; and with the included 3×5 notecards (or any 3×5 index card) Christian can add as many lists as he likes. With a bit of organizing, they can even be divided into categories such as for his various projects: Back Yard Landscape, Lowe’s Shopping, Places to Visit When We Go to Germany. . .
I use 3×5 cards often for quick lists. They are convenient and inexpensive. Years ago, when I was a young mother of two boys looking for divine inspiration to organize the chaos of our life, I remember stumbling across a woman whose business motto was “we change lives with 3x5s.” The jingle always stuck by me, even though I have long since abandoned the idea of scheduling every vacuuming and ironing date on a 3×5 note card.
The idea of using 3×5 cards has been taken to its elegant and sophisticated peak with the Levenger Company, an online source of reader and writer tools. Levenger has captured the essential easy and “cool” factor of 3×5 cards, and brought this to new limits. They offer personalized cards, launch pads, and accessories. I find that combining their products with the affordable office supply pack of notecards offers a reasonable and effective system for keeping track of things to do, projects, and “notes to self.”
Sometimes, paper and pencil are all that is needed to stay on top of a task. In the midst of bandwidth, and gigabytes, and wonderful new apps, sometimes I have to remind myself to Keep It Simple, Silly! It’s just a grocery list, for goodness sake!
Aren’t stickies — virtual and real — wonderful? Maybe someone will come up with a computer interface that mimics the note action board too! Thanks for your comment, Greta.
Time for me to ‘fess up to being a geek – that note action board is absolutely awesome! My version of that is a board which is half corkboard and half black marker board. My older daughter, the other super-organization-aholic in the family, converted me to the computer stickies application; meanwhile, now that she has gone off to college, she has converted to my note on the corkboard approach. Just to mix things up, I’ll send her the link for the note action board. Thanks for the heads up!