What Was The Secret Organization System Hidden In These Antique Desks?
September 16, 2024
source: Reddit
Picture yourself at an old wooden desk which has been polished by years of usage, and literally covered in papers, envelopes and bills. You actually handle the cash of the house or your business in the traditional technique without the assistance of computers, cellular phones where record books are required to be organized and checked regularly. It is in this Renaissance kind of setting, in this scene which has a distinct medieval air about it that those peculiar wooden drawers came into use. These are specifically designed drawers with a boxy front, open back and a featured provision for the label to go Those drawers were not just simple structures, they were much more significant than what was apparent.
These little drawers were an apparatus which assisted the community in managing their money balances long before the contemporary desk organization systems and solutions came into being. Seen in desks made since the early part of the twentieth century and even prior to that, they were primarily meant for the arrangement of letters and bills. The concept was simple: each drawer could be labeled with such as Due, Paid, and etc for bills or letters or any thing that goes in it.
These drawers must have been beautiful because of how utterly efficient they actually were. Ever got that scenario where you had to know which bill was going to be due next and when to clear it? That’s why, if only one would pull out a “Due” drawer, all the tools would be ready for use in an orderly manner. Finished paying? She would move it to the “Paid” drawer and then the cycle went on like this and thus helped in eliminating clutter on the desk and also avoiding theTop Noted Documents Noting Dated Documents Noting Formatted Documents Marking Menus confidently Many important documents we noted or well-formatted were not lost.
It may sound odd, yet there is something special about a rather clinical activity of sorting documents. It is a much older approach than today’s digitized systems whereby everything can be stored by a simple click of a button. Letters, bills, and receipts would be sorted by hand their importance was distinguished by labels woven on each drawer in distinct, hand-writing letters. In a world where people didn’t have application that reminds them of their bills due, this system was very essential in ensuring that everything was in order.
The drawers them selves where normally made of wood and were very smooth to be fixed inside the desk, normally these could glide in and out very easily. It had a slight frontage and could be labelled in anything from ‘Rent’ to ‘Suppliers,’ which were convenient references for the working man. In fact, one can easily imagine a person bent over a desk, sorting through papers, and feeling rather in charge of things given such an organisational structure at their disposal.
This is further underlined by the existence of these drawers which narrate a particular story about the periods in question. Years ago when Computers were not around people dealt with their cash and check boxes, letters and documents as part of their daily chores, particularly within households and petty businesses. The drawers were not only functional, they conveyed the role that paperwork and physical records played. This is a sentiment that is hard to come to grasp especially today that records in digital formats are par for the course – literally every piece of mail that was sent and received was significant. These items could be an important bill or a bill sent by a family member or even a business letter; these papers needed to be protected and well arranged.
Although most of us have grown up in an environment where emails and internet banking are the order of the day, these drawers from antique desks are a testament of how people kept track of their duties as are in the current generation. It’s a small and unpretentious item, but it tells a lot about the old days and for those lovers of retro items, it is an opportunity to own some piece and feel that you are associated with the old times.