Go (Nearly) Paperless In Your House

With a few easy steps, you can safely remove most of the paper clutter from your house and life.

While a paperless home is a challenging goal, a less-paper home can be accomplished by a series of paper-purging steps, followed by creating a few new habits.

Reducing Paper has many benefits:

• By keeping the right papers, and not all papers, it will be easier to find the papers that are truly important
• You'll be motivated to keep and file if you have a coherent strategy
• Less valuable space in your home/office is taken up by wasteful paper
• Possibility of Identity-theft may be reduced (if you employ some security on scanned files)

www.creatrope.com has some additional resources.

Step 1 Get And Read a Document Retention Guide

There are lots of sources of document retention.

A good documentation retention strategy will address the appropriate periods to keep tax records, personal health records, medical records, employment records, insurance records, pay stubs, warranty documents, home repair documents, bank statements, bills, credit card statements, and mortgage statements.

Search for document retention

I used this document retention document, but they vary and it would be a good idea to read a few and consider your personal situation. They are good guides.

As you get rid of paper, find a realistic balance between your desire to keep the item and thinking "what's the worst thing that could happen I never could lay my hands on this paper again?" You'll be surprised how much you can discard.

Comments

[lingg]

Take a picture of the document with your iphone there are lots of scan docs in the app store. Any (phone) camera will work for this- back up on external hard drive(s). your phone can help you eliminate paper in other ways too- write notes on it film menus etc.

[gusa]

fantastic! to simplicity and beyond!

[Krozgen]

Check out NeatReceipts ( http://neatreceipts.com ) for a great solution... I've got one, helps organize everything, and you can hook it up to your own scanner, so if you like the double sided auto loader, you can hook that up too.

[fpd]

Neatreceipts.com - the web site - looks nice, but how does it pick out the right information? I have a tough time finding the correct information at times. I am on-the-road for 100% of my job. All my scanners eventually broke. I now use a slim $250 digital camera for all my files. Here are some pointers to make sharp, uniform, small-file-size receipts: 1. Use the MACRO function to eliminate out-of-field (not focused) images. 2. Use the "TIMER" function (press the shutter release, wait 2 seconds) to ensure a clear shot in any light by propping my camera up, rather than holding the camera (reduce shaking) 3. ROTATE and CROP the raw image so I do not need to be concerned with a perfectly composed frame. The finished image size should be large enough for legibility (I use 1280 x 960 at 72dpi for full-page receipts). 4. Some receipts are dimly printed, so adjust CONTRAST and BRIGHTNESS if necessary to make the text stand out. 5. Convert image to "Newsprint" or "Gray scale" (black-and-white photo) to reduce file size (color images are larger in file size). 6. Save as .JPG - which seems to be the best image compression for size, but not for clarity. 7. DATE all filenames in a chronological order (year, month, date) followed by location and purpose. For example: 20070820_VATICAN_MEAL01.JPG I carry all the finished images (drag and drop the file) in the camera's memory. If I ran Microsoft Windows and used the camera's software I could view the finished images inside the camera. But, I run Linux (free, free, free), so the proprietary software does not exist to write the correct image formatting to view inside the camera. My solution to that is to plug the camera into the computer's USB port and read or send what I need. For international travel, ensured the battery charger for my camera (the size of the camera) operates on 240vac/120vac - 50Hz/60Hz. In the end I weighed time versus effort. There are plenty of times (hotels, airports) when I have time to do all my image processing. I compared that to the size and weight of camera versus scanner and possible power supply.

[Krozgen]

It picks out the right information by using advanced OCR methods. NeatReceipts advertises somewhere on its site, I'm pretty sure, that they're the most accurate software and scanner on the market. It's scary how good it is, haha. It recognizes store names, phone numbers, the correct totals... the very, very few times that I have to correct it, it's just a quick cut and paste. Definitely not a biggie for me, and I do tons of scanning at my job, as well as in my home.

Well, in the end I suppose it's really up to you. I suggest watching their demos, though, and judging for yourself. I'm pretty sure... *checks real quick* yea, they have a 30 day return policy, or something like that. If you don't like it, you could always send it back :-)

Sorry to keep adverting it, but it really is a perfect solution to this. Just trying to get the word out there :)

[fpd]

Neat stuff. I will have to take a look at this one for "home."

[NachoMahma]

. Great job! I'd like to know a little more about the thoughts/processes you used to decide the what/when/why of what to trash. I'm currently working on steps 1 and 2. I've gotten rid of a LOT of junk, but still have a long way to go. I'm having a hard time "letting go" of 50+ years of collected "stuff." Magazines and manuals are my downfall.
. I really enjoyed your "Entropy And Clutter" piece.

[tradergordo]

There are some free online storage solutions where you can park your (encrypted?) backups such as AOL x-drive, you could also use a USB drive, or FTP to a friend or family members computer if you can work something out. This will protect you in case of hard drive failure, theft, or worst case house fire situation. Don't forget to take some digital pictures of the contents of your house while you are at it, for insurance purposes.