Where do you store addresses?

by Kim Brewster

When purchasing a birthday card for a team member at a local card/gift shop, I commented on the beautiful journals on the counter. Two women behind the counter, appearing to me as wonderful grandmothers, replied that I was admiring address books, not journals.

I mentioned that I keep that information in the contacts of my Outlook system to which they both replied they did not know how to do that. One said, “I like the old way of writing and carrying it with me.” The other said, “I have always written everything down and I guess I always will.”

My mother-in-law keeps an address book that contains phone numbers and street addresses before the advent of area codes and zip codes. It’s practically a work of art. Her records could rival those of any county office. As an elementary school teacher when her children were young, she has expert penmanship, which is reflected in the neat lines and carefully scripted updates.

I have been storing information electronically for so long that I really can’t remember having a physical address book. Where would I be without my Outlook contacts? I can record birthdays, anniversaries, nick names, business and home addresses, websites, email addresses, and any other data I want to include. I can share the information with others and it is backed up regularly, so I don’t have to worry about losing anything.

If I lost a handwritten address book, I would be hard pressed to recreate that information quickly or easily.

I still read the newspaper every day, the demise of which has been greatly exaggerated, but my hand-written address book met its demise long ago.