Besides the obvious benefits of clearing up your clutter at home, you also gain peace of mind that your important documentation in digital form can be backed up, whereas paper is susceptible to the elements such as fire and water damage. And for the environmentalists, there is a green component to this -- energy savings from producing less paper and keeping the landfills less full.
Have I convinced you yet? You should know there is a bit of up front work in transforming your home office.
Your first line of defense is stopping the clutter before it even has a chance to enter your home. Sign up and register with junk mail opt out websites such as catalogchoice.org and directmail.com. Sign up for paperless billing and resist the urge to print out the bills, instead create a folder on your computer to toss them into. Explore the option of reading magazines online from websites like Zinio.com. Online banking is quick, easy and statements do not need to be printed out and filed. You can pay all your bills with a few, quick keystrokes.
Explore free digital assistants such as Evernote, which is essentially a way of storing information across all of your devices. Here is how they describe it:
“Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Capture everything now so you will be able to find it all later. Things to capture: Tasks and to-dos, Notes and research, Web pages, Whiteboards, Business cards, Scribbles, Snapshots, Wine labels, and even Twitter messages. And then find them all any time across all the computers and devices you use.”
Please don’t ditch things like Marriage/Divorce/Birth/Death certificates, paperwork related to purchasing a home, or your tax returns. The paperwork related to tax returns needs to be kept for 7 years and it is a good idea to seek the advice of your tax preparer.
The one constant in life is change and at times it seems hard to keep up in this digital age. I think it is important to embrace the positive side of change and try to keep up at your own comfortable pace. But there is no doubt about it -- our world is transforming into a paperless one. I, for one, am rather excited about it.
Here are more tips for achieving a paperless home space -
Buy a Scanner - You can scan all the paperwork that you need to keep, but put it in digital form and file it in a virtual filing cabinet on your computer. After researching a few scanners, a reasonably priced one I have come across is made by Doxie
Here is how they explain it “Doxie's apps make sharing and archiving easy – Doxie has direct support for local and web apps with smart integration for sharing and organizing your paper. Send your document to Acrobat for archiving, Evernote for reading on your iPhone, Google Docs for instant OCR… and much more. Doxie creates PDF files, lossless PNG, and JPEG images, so your scans are always exactly the way you want them, where you want them.”
Back Up Everything - Always back up your computer. I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer. You call also use an online back up company such as BackBlaze for a monthly fee. This will give you peace of mind once you commit to a paperless lifestyle.
Here are more websites to opt out of junk mail:
Catalog Choice - Stop receiving catalogs in the mail.
Direct Mail - Stop the junk mail and advertisements.
Opt Out Prescreen - Stop credit card offers.
