Has Paper Taken Over Your Home?

Do you have file cabinets full of important papers that you need to keep? Is paper taking over your home? Do you have a hard time getting tax papers together? Are your recipes all scattered throughout your recipe books? There is an easier way to keep those papers without having to sort through tons of pages to find the one you need.

Store your papers digitally. You can find PSC's (Printer/Scanner/Copier) at low prices almost everywhere. I purchased my most recent PSC from Amazon for less than $25.00! Once I saw that scanning my documents was working well for me I purchased PDF Create! 4. Now I scan a document that has several pages and save it into one PDF file. It saves me a lot of time because I don't have to stop and name each and every paper that I scan.

To get started, create a new folder on your computer. Now, open that folder and create folders/sub-folders for every category you might need. If you forget to create a folder, you can always add another one later. Some folders you might use: Auto, Insurance, Health, Legal, Taxes, etc.

Next, grab a stack of your papers and find a comfortable spot close to your scanner. Open your scanner software and start scanning. If you have a lot of papers that you need to scan you can do it in sessions so you don't feel overwhelmed. If you do not have a program that will save several pages into one PDF file you will need to name each paper after you scan it. Save your scanned pages to the folders that you created earlier. (use drop down arrow to save in correct folder, if necessary) Before disposing of the paper I recommend opening the file to be certain that the scan is readable and saved properly.

If you are worried about losing the files if your computer crashes, no need to worry. There are a few ways to prevent this from happening. I use a DVD & a flash drive. A friend of mine found a great deal on a 4GB flash drive at Target for only $9.99. Some people prefer to upload their files to a storage site. You can use SkyDrive for 25GB of free storage. I like to save at least two backups because you never know when something could happen. Whatever method you choose, be sure to keep all of your backups up to date!