I unearthed my Rolodex file from the garage a mere ten minutes ago and I ALREADY feel better.

No, it doesn't contain the phone number of a masseuse. Or a handsome beau. Or even an express chocolate courier service that guarantees delivery within moments of your first craving or your money back.

In fact, it contains no numbers at all. It's empty. But just SEEING it buoys me with hope because this simple little office accoutrement, this outdated data-storing widget if you will, is going to revolutionize my entire life.

I bought this particular Rolodex years ago. It's not the little kind that holds business cards. It's the big carousel version that spins 2x3" cards around in some sort of rotisserie fashion, like the chicken-broasting machine at your grocer's deli. Only better, because broasted chicken never saved anyone's life. At least that I know of.

This Rolodex saved mine for an entire year.

I started off using it to store all my phone numbers. Then addresses. Then emails. Then birthdays and passwords and the combination to my locker at the gym.

Before long I'd added the dates of my last oil change, the name of the video game my kids wanted for Christmas and the recipe for homemade Play Dough.

Soon I was going through the entire house with a laundry basket, collecting all the weird scraps of paper on which I'd written pertinent information: The shoebox lid with the express service ID number for my laptop. The table napkin with the birthdays of my niece and nephews. The used envelope on which I'd handwritten detailed directions for reprogramming my VCR.

I transferred the information and tossed the clutter.

Dental appointment reminder cards? Gone. The schedule for the coming opera season that I never attend but always think I will? Gone. The salvaged magazine pages I've hung onto for two years because they contain 800-numbers for household gadgets I'm almost pretty sure I can't live without?

All gone.

When I found a slip of paper with directions for patching our inflatable kiddie pool, I wrote the instructions on a Rolodex card and threw that paper-like all the others-in the trash. I even stapled the accompanying patching fabric to the back of the card.

In other words, I stuck EVERYTHING in that Rolodex. Anything lying around the house was fair game. One day I spotted something I'd missed and made a beeline for it, but my husband saw me coming and hurried outside to mow the lawn.

This simple Rolodex kept my house clutter-free for an entire year, until the day I "upgraded" to a PDA.

After a season of learning curves, technical difficulties and software crashes, I got frustrated. Eventually I reverted to my old ways, hanging onto random papers, writing things down on weird little scraps. Like rising floodwaters, clutter seeped then poured back into my life.

I've been drowning ever since.

I'm coming to the conclusion that newer isn't always better. Old school can still rule. And sometimes the stuff we discarded yesterday is the very thing we still need in our lives today.

See why unearthing this simple desktop gadget is such a big deal? It's not just a Rolodex. It's a way of life.

I'll bet you've never said that about a broasted chicken.