I Had the Right People. None of Them Could Find a Single Thing. Here Is What I Fixed.

I thought I was done.

I had the contact cards filled out. Roles assigned. I knew who would make medical decisions, who would handle finances, who was the first call. August felt complete.

Then I got to the storage section. The part where you write down where everything actually lives.

And I asked a question I had not thought to ask before. If my person showed up tomorrow and needed to handle things, could they find anything?

Not who to call. Where things are.

The answer was no.

My photos were spread across four places. Some on my phone, some in iCloud, some in Google Photos because I turned it on once and never went back to check what it was doing. Plus a stack of my dad’s old CDs I keep promising to sort out.

The accounts were the same story. Not new ones. Old ones, the kind you forget because everything is on autopay.

Then the documents that only exist once. One paper, one place, no copy.

None of it was dramatic. It was messy in a normal-life way.

This week on Substack I wrote about the map I built and the three categories I worked through to get there. It took one more evening.

If you have already done the people part, this is the half that comes next.

Read it here →