Are you sick of shelves and drawers of paper organized by manilla folders? If so, you’re a traditionalist by nature, or just fearful to step into the computerized organization flow. In plain terms, you don’t trust computers.
You certainly have reason to balk at going paperless. There have been plenty war stories being thrown around about blue screens of death, hard drive crashes, Apple spinning wheels, and of course, computer viruses. But, as long as you have a good computer file backup, you can venture into the paperless realm of organizational bliss.
Here’s how to go paperless:
- Sleep easy at night. Back up your files to an external hard drive or online cloud storage site, such as DropBox, Carbonite, or Mozy. Then, you can go store files on your computer and not worrying about losing everything if there’s a computer crash.
- Go paperless billing. Contact your banks, utilities, and companies to receive your bill via email or online. You’ll also be able to review past bills easily. Further, banking institutions typically allow for automatic downloading and syncing with Quickbooks, Quicken, and other accounting software for easy viewing.
- Scan old paper documents. Here’s the heavy lifting part. Scan all your important paper documents into your computer. Organize them in folders. You can use your all-in-one printer, dedicated scanner, or smartphone app for this. This will banish all trees for good from your closets and drawers.
- Stop printing! Need to save a website? Save it or bookmark it. Have some thoughts to jot down? Use Microsoft Word. Want to organize a project or event? Use Pinterest. You catch the drift. Use a computer program instead of printing anything essential.
Those steps will get you going towards paperless freedom. Not only is it good for the environment, but you’ll be better organized. Please note that going paperless could leave you in a frenzied state of euphoria. That being said, I am not responsible for any freak actions you take after going to paperless heaven.