I only have one photo to support my thesis, but I’m going ahead anyway. Here’s the photo:
This is a view of the interior of the furnace closet. All the notations are in Dad’s writing documenting the dates on which he had changed the furnace filter.
He had installed a water softener not long after we moved to the Santa Clara house. The water softener uses salt pellets which periodically have to be added to a barrel in the garage. That system has been replaced at least once in the 60+ years and the one now in use is 15 or 20 years old. The lid of the salt barrel is filled with similar notations of when he had added salt pellets. It’s even more dramatic looking than the furnace closet.
In Mom’s car at this very moment, I am sure – without looking, I’m at home as I write this – there is a little book with notations showing every gasoline purchase since the car was new. She has faithfully carried on this tradition of Dad’s for years now. I’m not as sure that she is keeping the service records there as Dad did.
For many years, I carried on this tradition in my own vehicles as well. I finally realized that there was no benefit to me so I stopped. I can look at credit card records if I have to although I can’t use them to calculate mileage, as he did. I am guilty of occasionally putting dates on things that I use: ibuprofen, laundry detergent, potato chips, toothpaste, for example, so that I can gauge how long they actually last. Perhaps that was Dad’s motivation. I prefer to think that he was a scientist to the bone and always wanted to work from a position of factual knowledge.
To be fair, I never saw dates written on any perishables at our house growing up. Perhaps, with 6 kids, things got used up so fast it didn’t matter.