On Wed, 28 Mar 2012, Jim Thompson wrote:

Whatzit Called?

Clear plastic envelope that you can _stick_ (adhesive-backed) on the
back of appliances to stash installation and operation manuals?

(18 YO house, just had to replace my office ceiling fan, and water
softener... A/C units next :-(

It's called a "scanner".

As soon as you open something, read the manual. Then scan it into digital
form, along with any peripheral reading material in the box, and the bill.
Then file it under a name unique to that piece of equipment, and put that
in a folder titled "manuals" or something that you will clearly remember.

Sometimes you no longer even have to scan the manual, you may be able to
find it in electronic form at the manufacturer's website, or indeed, the
item may not have a real paper manual, expecting you to get it in digital
form at the companie's website, or they put it on a CD (less and less
likely these days) which they put in the box.

Since you've put things in a central place, you know where they are. You
can even back up this directory with a USB flash drive, making the manuals
handy and portable.

You can put reviews in with this material, if you want that sort of thing.
Or bits about repair of the item, as you need it or in anticipation of
a problem. Any maintenance you or the company does can be recorded in
this directory too. Or if it has some consumable, you can keep track of
when you buy and how much, so you can watch for sales, or anticipate
needing a refill.

And then while you're at it, use a permanent marker (one of those silver
Sharpies look good on black) or one of those label makers, and label any
accessories so you know which item they go with. Especially useful for
the ac adapters, indeed it's probably worth recording any information on
those in your file for the device, since if it gets separate, the
information about the voltage and polarity may not be on the main device
(and if polarity isn't listed, measure it now). I've even gone to buying
"Tupperware" like plastic boxes for any piece of equipment I get that has
enough accessories, so I have one for my digital camera, making it really
easy to find the cable to connect it to the tv set. Sometimes one box is
too much, so organize it along groups, "accessories for MP3 players" or
"plug in memory" for the USB flash drives and CompactFlash and SD cards.

Michael