Eliminating Paper Clutter

Paper clutter is one of my worst nightmares! I have it everywhere! I'm one of those people that keeps everything "just in case"!! Thankfully, over the years I have been able to decrease the amount of papers I have in my file cabinet/house. Now, I am working on a seemingly never ending project of scanning in "keep papers" to my computer.

Years ago I had stacks and stacks of magazines to keep. Yes, stacks. One day I started going through them and pulling out articles that I wanted to keep for one reason or another. I organized those into categories (organizing tips, dream home ideas, gardening, etc) and they lived in a file cabinet for a couple years. After moving twice, I finally decided to start scanning those papers into my computer, creating a virtual file cabinet of everything I wanted to keep.

Here's one stack of papers to scan! Imagine a large box full of this!

I started by going through each folder and tossing out the pages I didn't feel I needed or wanted anymore. Then I organized them into better categories and started scanning. Each category has its own named folder and the file name of the document corresponds with the folder.

I use an HP printer & simply used the scanning option on the HP Solution Center.

My trusty HP. It's a little time consuming putting one page at a time in, but will be so worth it!!

I am more than halfway done with this project and will be so glad to get one more box out of the house when it's completely done!