I always have a notebook going. It's always a single-subject, college-ruled spiral notebook. I fill about one a month. I buy them in July during back to school sales, when I can get them in bulk.
It's always just one notebook. I use a tab system to keep track of each notebook's contents by broad categories - personal projects, work stuff, etc. Within those broad tabs, though, contents can vary greatly. This month's "projects," for instance, covers both my notes from amateur radio class and my garden stuff.
The longer I garden, the more I think the garden stuff really should live in its own notebook. But that would require me to either maintain two notebooks or tear down old ones and move the garden pages to their own binder.
I did tear down my notebooks once - the pile I had from about 1996 to 2009. I regret this. I had to guess in the moment what counted as "useful" and what should be "tossed out," and I learned later I was wrong. I haven't done that since.
Instead, I have a steadily-growing pile of notebooks on a bookshelf in my basement. They are sorted, more or less, by date (dates are written in the inside front cover). The tab system (since 2015) gives some idea what's in the newer ones.
These piles are going to be my descendants' problem. I apologize in advance, but I am not Swedish Death Cleaning these. You can read them. You can mulch them. You can burn them. I won't care. I'll be dead.
Some of the info in them might be useful. Some of it might be interesting. A lot of it is to-do lists and me complaining about whatever is going on in my life. Some of that might be entertaining. Most of it won't be.
I'm not going to stop. The notebooks are an essential extension of my brain at this point. The notebooks will continue until morale improves. Or I hoard myself out of the basement. That last one is unlikely.
Would I rather leave a neater, more "useful" legacy? idk. Maybe. I don't actually know what that would look like, though. What are my descendants going to want or need when I'm gone? I have no idea. They're getting this messed up, in-the-moment record of my messy, glorious human life. What they do with it is in the context of their own messy, in-the-moment, glorious human lives. Eh.
I really should make separate tabs for the class notes, though. Or I'm going to hate myself when it's time to cram for the license test.
--