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Ask HN: How do you organize and archive your paper-based documents?

by phil3k on 10/19/19, 6:42 PM with 3 comments

• by dhruvkar on 10/20/19, 9:39 AM

  Incoming documents (mail, bills, receipts, etc.) go into one large folder. I do a quick gut check before putting them in. Will I need this in 6 month, 1 year? Only if I need it on a long term basis, its put in this folder.

  End of the week, everything is scanned and the paper is sorted into one of three folders (1) Keep, (2) Throw or (3) Shred. I'd say less than 5% of documents make it into the (1) Keep folder. I have a small filing cabinet for all our physical papers (family of 3).

  End of the month, the three folders are emptied. That gives me chance to rethink any decisions.

  I scan using Fujitsu ix500. It's one of the few machines that was discontinued and now has doubled in price. OCRs, deskews, removes blank pages and scans anything flat including credit cards and obnoxiously long receipts. Worth its weight in gold. Its successor, ix1500 is not too shabby either (it's my office scanner).

  The scanned documents are organized using the Johnny Decimal system [0].

  0: https://johnnydecimal.com/

• by AndreFvchs on 10/19/19, 9:46 PM

  I'm trying to go paperless. My routine is to scan every document with Microsoft OfficeLens and upload it as a PDF to my cloud. I only keep really important docs - currently I'm using Leitz document folders [0] for them. (They don't take up as much space as regular folders)

  [0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41jj3G9Ie%2...

• by ParameterOne on 10/22/19, 12:30 AM

  I scan them and save them on some kind of digital format. And things like my kids artwork I save in a box in the closet :-)