At least I’ve gotten something right....

Been a really bad day. After going outside, spilled coffee all over the floor by the front door. Broke the front of my iPhone outside. And got eaten by ants moving trash to the front. Damned I’m feeling like calling in, but I got to get to work in a few hours.

At least I did get finished with this. I’ve been moving as much as possible to being paperless, books I’m reading not withstanding. Since the mid-1990s at the beginning of every year I would start a multi page file for the new year with sections for taxes, paychecks, medical, etc. After the following new year, I’d complete my taxes, print off a final copy for this file and then place it into a box for “long term” storage. Then I’d pull the file from five years previous, purge it of things I don’t need anymore (old receipts, etc) and then destroy the paper. I’d put the now reduced file with the essential (e.g. tax and medical records) in the file.

Well, last spring I bought a Scan Snap scanner to start getting this paper converted into electrons.

After scanning the 2013 files I started to get excited. I reduced an eight inch file to a few files, everything else is electrons (backed up on CD and online). Then it came time to get the big project started.

Fifteen years of papers!

Took two of these boxes to hold!

First, I brought up two boxes of files for scanning.

The remains after I scanned.

Next, over two weeks I scanned one section after another into my computer.  This was fun and made a real mess for the time but it was only temporary!

This project was a pain in the ass but it reduced two boxes to a few files:

The remains.  Elmer wants to help Daddy!

And here are the remains. Now how to destroy this without burning up my shredder or paying Shred-it a fortune. Well, I want to be environmentally sensitive so I pulled the bag downstairs, put it in my BBQ pit and burned it. Hey, the plants will love all the CO2 I put out for them to breath.

My neighbor though the house was on fire...I can't understand why?! :<)

The next morning I went outside and it was still smoldering.  Turned a few more pages and it burned down by noon.  Put the ashes in a box for pick up with the Friday morning trash.

All in all a pain in the ass but I've reduced my paper retention to less than 5% of what I used to have.  Can't beat it.

Hope you have a great week!