I’m tired of having a completely disorganized junk drawer of bills, coupons, kids artwork and restaurant take out menus. Right now we have 3-5 collection spots of this junk and it overflows from 1 to another.
What do you guys do to get paperless in this regard? I’m struggling to choose between something like Evernote for Business, a shared OneDrive/Dropbox/Google Drive folder of more disorganized junk.
Ideally i’d like to scan the document into the “system”. Then me and my wife can find it on our phones and either print it again if needed or just reference it digitally.
I don’t have a clear answer for you but can’t wait to see what people post. This is a great question!
I suspect many solutions would work. I’d lean toward the Dropbox one and just have a shared folder. Hazel could probably help (both to place, organize, and remove old files). ScannerPro on iOS can put scans on cloud services automatically, as well.
I don’t know that you’d need Evernote for this and that may clutter it up quite a bit.
I have access to a document scanner that I’m not using at work. I have an Epson ES400 i think. Also an older ScanSnap 1500. The mess is driving me nuts. I think search ability is going to be the key.
Get a scanner. I recommend Fujitsu scanners (I have an S1300 - good for 2-sides, up to a dozen sheets in folder, etc. and S1100 - good for small receipts, single sheets).
The scanner will help you get through your stack (if that’s what you want to do). For future, use the scanners, or use your iPhone/iPad to scan using one of the many apps that can scan stuff. Hard to do a lot of bulk scanning with an iPhone/Ipad, though.
We scan EVERYTHING. We keep only the paper copies that are really important and we might need the paper originals. We shred everything else.
We use a simple file naming convention YYYYMMDDHHMMSS Money xxxxx. where the date/time is obvious and default provided by the scanner, “Money” is a tag which says it has something about ‘money’ and xxxxx whatever we want to say to elaborate. We don’t use OSX tags. All the files get put into the same folder in dropbox called ~/Money. Everything. The date/time in the file “remembers” when it was created regardless of the system dates (which can change).
We use Finder to search for things by sorting, searching, or whatever. Finder’s showing an image of the document’s first page is terrific in finding stuff. Going back to find things doesn’t happen as much as you would think, but we have piece of mind that we have everything and everyone in the family with access to this Dropbox folder can get to stuff as needed.
We don’t use folders, but sometimes every few years we move stuff into subfolders by Year (to cut down on the size of the folder), but otherwise no complicated folder stuff. Not needed.
I am using a scanner to deal with documents, I scan the documents in and OCR them, then they get sorted into some folders the same as all my digital documents I receive do.
These folders live in google drive and I keep a shared folder with my wife to deal with the current documents, after a year being shared I archive older documents so as to not junk up the document system
Bills I handle by scanning and filing (now using more hazel rules) after they are paid and then shredding the paper.
Coupons go into my purse in one limited section and I clean it out monthly of any that have expired.
No kids artwork (the sheep don’'t paint ) but for my own fumbling attempts I decided to buy a nice artist notebook and all teh items ar ein that. As a scrapbooker I’d have a single container, I like Rubbermaid Clever Store Basic Latch- Opaque Lid 15 qt. ones They are 16.7"L x 13.3"W x 5.3"H and are perfect for corraling sets of documents. For the kids I’d put everythign in ther and when it’s full sort through and decide what to keep and save vs toss. Consider scanning and adding to digital scrapbooks at least one item per month as a record of artistic progress.
Take out menus I’d scann and add to my DEVONThink system but that is not shared with hubby. If I had to share I’d probably use Google drive just because we already share a few things there. If anything is private or personal we have a shared folder on our main server where those documents can go.
Key is a good scanner and a consistent naming/filing system you both can agree on.
) but for my own fumbling attempts I decided to buy a nice artist notebook and all teh items ar ein that. As a scrapbooker I’d have a single container, I like Rubbermaid Clever Store Basic Latch- Opaque Lid 15 qt. ones They are 16.7"L x 13.3"W x 5.3"H and are perfect for corraling sets of documents. For the kids I’d put everythign in ther and when it’s full sort through and decide what to keep and save vs toss. Consider scanning and adding to digital scrapbooks at least one item per month as a record of artistic progress.