Fable
The three kinds of boxes in the warehouse
The inn kept rosters, IOUs, and old letters. The innkeeper had once stuffed everything into the same storeroom, and later could neither find the needed vouchers nor explain why strangers' sensitive records had been kept for years.
The accountant tagged by purpose: debts are handled after settlement and the required period has passed, room reservation notes are kept only until the end of the month, and government certificates are sealed and stored separately. Each type of data has an owner, a triggering event, and an expiration action.
A dispute was not yet closed, so the shopkeeper suspended destruction of related evidence and logged the reason; other similar records were still cleared on the original schedule. Exceptions don't rely on verbal orders—they must be approvable and reviewable.
The warehouse lists boxes nearing expiry every week; deletion, archiving, or anonymization all leave results. Backups, logs, and legal holds are also included in the same lifecycle list.
A retention policy turns “keep it, it might be useful” into executable retention-period management, establishing clear boundaries between evidence availability, privacy risk, and storage cost.