The File Butler

Every office worker owns a folder that started as a filing system and became a landfill. Yours might be Documents, a desktop that looks like a crime scene, or a work stuff folder with final_v3_REAL(2).xlsx in it. You know the folder. You've been meaning to sort it since spring.

In First Kitchen Lesson 8 you tidied Downloads and learned the automation pattern: chore → script → schedule → log → off switch. Today that pattern gets its first work assignment — and a promotion. A tidy script cleans up once. A butler keeps a place tidy, knows the house's filing rules, and reports what it did. The difference is rules — yours.

What you'll plate today

A butler for your messiest work folder: files sorted by your filing logic, a log you can audit, a dry-run habit that means it never surprises you — and a schedule so it stays done.

Ingredients

• Your prep-station folder from Lesson 1, CHORES.md scoped and ready
• Your genuinely messy work folder (you named it during the interview — you know the one)
• About 35 minutes

Cook

1. Teach it your filing logic first

Generic sorting (by file type) is what Downloads got. Work files deserve work logic — projects, clients, years, whatever you reach for:

We're building the File Butler for [your folder path]. Before
touching anything:

1. Scan the folder and show me the SHAPE of the mess: how many
   files, what kinds, oldest and newest, the naming patterns you
   notice. Names only — don't open contents yet (house rule).
2. Then interview me, up to five questions, to learn my filing
   logic: what I search for when I need a file, which projects or
   clients matter, what "old" means to me.
3. Write the rules into BUTLER.md in plain words. No code yet.

Read BUTLER.md like a job description, because it is one. If a rule is wrong on paper it'll be wrong at machine speed.

2. Dry run — the butler's interview suit

New safety habit for work files, stricter than Downloads got:

Build the butler script from BUTLER.md with the Daily Special
safety rules — MOVE never delete, skip files touched in the last
3 days, log every move with a date to butler-log.txt.

Then do a DRY RUN first: show me the full list of what WOULD move
where, without moving anything. I'll approve before anything real
happens.

Read the dry run — actually read it. Somewhere in that list is a surprise: a file it wants to move somewhere you disagree with. Good. That's a rule you forgot to say out loud:

No — contracts stay in the top level even when they're old. Add
that to BUTLER.md, rebuild, and dry-run again.

That loop — dry run, catch, refine the rule, dry run again — is the whole discipline of automating things you care about. Repeat until the list has zero surprises. Then run it for real.

3. Open the folder and breathe

Look at the actual folder. Months of guilt, standing in labeled rows. Check butler-log.txt — every move, receipted. If any single file feels wrong, the log tells you exactly where it went, and one order brings it back.

4. Put the butler on staff

Schedule the butler to run every weekday at 12:30, like my Daily
Special from First Kitchen. Show me the off switch before it's
scheduled. Then make a save point: "the file butler", and mark
this chore DONE in CHORES.md with today's date.

That last touch — marking CHORES.md — matters more than it looks. Your chore map from Lesson 1 is becoming a scoreboard, and scoreboards are how you'll know, in Lesson 10, how much week you actually got back.

When it burns

• The folder is inside OneDrive/SharePoint and paths look weird — same dragon as First Kitchen, corporate flavor: "my folder syncs with OneDrive — find its real path first, and tell me if syncing makes moves risky." (Usually fine; the butler should skip files mid-sync.)
• The dry run wants to move 400 files and you can't review them all — shrink the bite: "This month's files only for the first real run. Widen the net one month at a time." Trust is built in batches.
• Two rules disagree (it's a contract AND it's old) — the butler needs a tiebreak: "When rules conflict, the safer rule wins and the file goes to needs-review/ for me." A needs-review pile is a feature, not a failure.
• Shared folder, other people's files — stop. Your butler tidies your files only until Lesson 9 (the safety inspection). Automating shared spaces without asking is how office automation gets banned.
• It ran at 12:30 and moved something you were working on — the 3-day skip rule should've caught it; if your rhythm is faster, widen it: "skip anything touched in the last 7 days."

Order up

□ BUTLER.md holds YOUR filing logic, in plain words
□ You caught at least one wrong rule in a dry run and fixed it
□ The folder is sorted, and butler-log.txt receipts every move
□ Scheduled on weekdays — and you know the off switch
□ CHORES.md shows its first DONE

Next up — Lesson 03: The Report Sous-Chef. The butler handles where files live. Next, the chore everyone hates most: the recurring status report — drafted from your real notes before you've had coffee.

Stuck on a step? Question box below — a step that lost you is a hole in the lesson, not in you.