Last Week's List, Folded in a Drawer

When the new sheet goes up under the magnet, the old one does not go in the trash. Fold it once, write the date on the outside, and drop it in a kitchen drawer.

After a couple of months the drawer holds a modest archive of ordinary life. Pull out a sheet at random and try to remember the week behind it before unfolding it: what happened, who came by, what the weather was doing. Then read and see how close you came. Rebuilding a stretch of the past from a few clues is good exercise for recall, and the clues here are your own.

The archive also answers small arguments. When did we last buy light bulbs? Did the coffee run out faster in the cold months? The answers sit in pencil in your own hand.

Once a season, keep a few sheets you like and recycle the rest. The point was never to hoard paper, only to give the weeks a little more shape than they would have otherwise.