Paperless and Important Documents

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I’m a long time paperless devotee and after a recent house closing was dutifully scanning the documents and stopped to wonder, " What documents should I actually keep versus scanning and shredding? This question actually applies to the whole gamut of paperless. I don’t want to retain scanned documents unnecessarily on the other hand I don’t want to shred something that may require an original signed or notarized version at some point in the future.

Has anyone considered this and can offer any guidance?

Thanks in advance

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this may vary from countries to countries but in general, I would not destroy the original legal documents, contracts, certificates, etc. For most others like, invoices, receipts, warranty details, I scanned and keep them in DEVONthink

Not sure this helps

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I am with @fuzzygel

I keep paper diplomas, certificates, contracts, deeds, written references and testimonials, wedding certificate, birth certificate, car papers, and in-force insurance policies and also put scans in Devonthink.

I always try to download manuals in pdf to a separate Devonthink database. I will keep the original only with the box for items I think I will resell at some stage. Other manuals will also find the shredder after I have the PDF on file.

The rest goes from envelope to scanner to shredder or Download to Hazel/Devonthink to designated folder. Everything older than 7 years goes into a deep archive (because storage is cheap)

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I keep anything notarized or with a seal. Also anything that requires an original like a will. I do scan them in so I have a reference copy online. I have a fireproof 2 drawer file cabinet that I’ve owned for years. My papers in it take up about ¼ of one drawer. More space is taken by backup drives.

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Some good suggestions from this thread last year.

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Thanks everyone some very good points. I guess I should have been more specific in framing my question which was really intended to be things which as a US citizen I am legally or otherwise required to be maintained or the original’s produced for them to be valid. Broad categories I was thinking about were 1 ) legal documents, wills, trusts, deeds, contracts, title or other insurance policies, 2) government mandated documents primarily tax related, 3) financial documents/records. @evanfuchs referred me to a good prior thread. I think I just need to try and distill the documents that MUST be produced as originals and everything else…