A clever affordance of card index filing cabinet drawers

Someone recently mentioned to me that the small, portable 1,000 index card capacity cardboard box with lid that they use as a zettelkasten felt more like it was for deep storage rather than daily use. Perhaps it's a result of the fact that this is how most people have been using these cheaper cardboard boxes for the last 30+ years? They said they'd prefer to have a drawer or a box with an attached lid.  It dawns on me that I've never mentioned one of the great affordances of many of the […]

https://boffosocko.com/2026/01/07/a-clever-affordance-of-card-index-filing-cabinet-drawers/

I was cleaning and doing some restoration work on a new card index and realized that this Fred Macey Company cabinet body was the perfect size to hold up to 8 typewriters inside for a mix of both storage and display! 

On a quick front-of-the-index card calculation, I realize that with the recent Steelcase cabinet acquisition, I now have 8 boxes comprising 61 drawers and 103.25 feet of storage space for approximately 172,296 index cards. Having spent a total of $786.52 on them over the past year this comes out at about $12.89 per drawer, which is fantastically under the $14-25 ubiquitous 11″ cardboard boxes for such a massive step up in quality and longevity. 

#cardIndexFilingCabinets #Zettelkasten #zettelkastenBoxes

https://boffosocko.com/2024/02/23/55821678/