Labeling/keeping track of wood piles hack-cell phone photos!

I hate labelling things, and I know it's useful but using a toxic permanent marker or a piece of wood I have to cut for it (since paper would blow away, plastic I don't really have, etc...) all demotivates me...and the work involved in making a burnt- or carved-wood sign for this is more than I am willing to do.

And every time a branch comes down I have a different pile of wood drying for a year.  (Thanks storm for the nice easily broken maple branch today!)

SO, I realized I could photograph the pile with my phone and label it in there with the date in brilliant red letters.

Disadvantages--
--have to go look at my phone to know which pile is what age
--if I don't have my phone I have to go inside...
--if I'm out of battery @#$%@$%
--it's easier to see physical signs and not have to go look something up

advantages/mitigations for disadvantages:
--usually my phone is  one thing that's in my pocket all the time
--if I'm out of charge, I have a nifty little portable PV panel my partner got me
--I don't really need this information all that frequently, just when I finish one pile and start using the next
--I could make one single physical sign that says (or communicates to me) CURRENT pile so I know to keep using that one...for now I can remember, but when my current pile is done I may want to label
--I save toxic gick, labor,

I would add that the key to having your smartphone serve as "your photographic memory" is to sort your photos into folders as soon as you can... ideally in the moment, or as part of some daily/weekly reflection.
A camera roll full of pics with nothing but chronological order as a cue/clue to how to find what you need to remember is maddening as time marches on...

I find that other mnemonic devices (or maybe they are habits?) are just as fast to use as the camera and make me think more intentionally about what I'm doing. One that I use for sorting ripening avocados on the counter "from left to ripe" (a play on 'left to right', always makes me smile, I even smiled while typing this )  Even simpler things like only one or two (okay maybe three) places for my keys, or a definite order to the knife block to make finding *this one knife* easy.

Joshua, it seems like a 3-bin system might be as easy for firewood as for compost? A bin to burn, a bin to season, a bin for new collections? Or it could be stacks beside the door, alternating sides to burn each year.

Or some other device, like if your piles are scattered throughout the woods, maybe they are stacked between trees? Before the winter/or when you feel a stack is complete, you could lay a forked branch atop the stacks you built that year, with the crotch around one tree, and the next spring/summer, you could add a second branch on top and around the opposite tree. Then in the fall, you know the stacks with two branches are ready to haul home. Even if they tumbled down you could probably figure it out.

Aluminum soda/beer cans hold up pretty well...Possibly a use for litter as a sign material? They cut with scissors, and could be "written on" in relief with a stylus or ball-point pen. Could be useful for all sorts of weatherproof labels.