Meh, usually I love any OCD-like activity. But I'm not sure how much effort it's worth to document seeds from a swap that occurred 4-5 years ago, with seeds that might have been 2-5 years old then, and only had a common name on the packet.
Right when I'm planning what I'll sow for some season, I DO want to know what I have that's relevant. So I open the relevant tub or sub-envelope and look them over, "swiping right" the packets that I might want to plant that year. Usually then I will make a list of (say) 5 varieties I might WANT to plant, and later narrow it down to 1, 2 or 3 varieties that I have ROOM to plant!
I did try to keep an "all seeds database" for a few years. Then I could tell what I had in any one category by just looking at 1-2 pages. But it was MUCH easier to buy and trade for seeds than to track what went in, how many packets were taken out, etc. One year in Ella's Piggy Swap killed the idea of keeping THAT up-to-date!
Here is how I listed seeds while I was keeping that doc current. Single-sided, usually one big cell for each variety.
It's only in the last few years that not every new crop seed went into the"Vegetables" document.
But I do keep a directory of all seed purchases, with full info on each seed type purchased.
And anything I buy in sufficient quantity to split into more than 1-2 sub-packets gets a page in my directory of "bulk seed labels". Those are double-sided labels edited to be as concise as possible.
And it's true: after I retire, I'll buy fewer seeds but document them more obsessively.
Right now, I know what I have by looking and counting (before each seed swap).
If there was a separate column for "my total inventory" in our Swap Lists, that decremented and incremented when I put items into swaps or take them back after a swap is over, I would try to keep that "current" by also editing it when I just take a packet of seeds out to sow or give away or cackle over.
