an apology to whichever of my family has to clean out my basement when I die

I always have a notebook going. It's always a single-subject, college-ruled spiral notebook. I fill about one a month. I buy them in July during back to school sales, when I can get them in bulk. It's always just one notebook. I use a tab system to keep track of each notebook's contents by broad categories - personal projects, work stuff, etc. Within those broad tabs, though, contents can vary greatly. This month's "projects," for instance, covers both my notes from amateur radio class and my garden stuff. The longer I garden, the more I think the garden stuff really should live in its own notebook. But that would require me to either maintain two notebooks or tear down old ones and move the garden pages to their own binder. I did tear down my notebooks once - the pile I had from about 1996 to 2009. I regret this. I had to guess in the moment what counted as "useful" and what should be "tossed out," and I learned later I was wrong. I haven't done that since. Instead, I have a…