These are usually small aggregates and summaries, so I just display them in notebook output. It does make it take a bit longer to scroll through the notebook to find something, but that's what being disciplined with organization is for.
Sorry, I'm not sure I'm following your argument. Are you saying your notebooks hold state that's easily reconstitutable, and so it's not actually such a big deal to regenerate your "precious state"?
No worries, apology accepted! You misunderstood what I wrote: parts of my state are small enough for me to print() them in a cell and use the output as reference.