[jopsen]

Question: why bother organizing papers?

I just throw everything in a box, if I ever need it again later it'll take a long time to find.. but I rarely need to find a document again.

Complexity of archiving a document is O(1) with a very small constant. Complexity of retrieval is O(N) for a large N.

But I have few retrievals in my system, so why pay a higher per document cost?

[tombrossman]

> Question: why bother organizing papers?

Because being organised makes you more effective. With your 'throw it all in a box' system, you have a high barrier to finding documents in the future and this discourages you from doing so. However, with a more organised approach you are more likely to retrieve specific documents.

One example: Some mid-priced electronic device breaks a few months after you buy it. You might weigh digging through all the paperwork versus shrugging your shoulders and throwing it away. I would go straight to the warranty document and also look at my credit card issuer's warranty/returns policies(if any), and I would return the item for a replacement or refund. No biggie, only a few minutes work and I as a consumer prevail in exercising my rights.

Sounds boring but I believe it is definitely worth making the effort.

[ekianjo]

> Because being organised makes you more effective

I agree with the sentiment, but I tend to agree with the previous poster. The value of paper documents tends to be really low in the long run. I think you can keep it maybe for a few years when it comes to bills, but anything longer than that and there's not really a lot of value to go back to what you purchased/did or even where you traveled. I am also fairly organized but I tend to see as kind of futile, since I don't really need to go back and search for stuff that often.

[jcelerier]

> With your 'throw it all in a box' system, you have a high barrier to finding documents in the future and this discourages you from doing so.

In fifteen years of keeping my mail I maybe had once or twice to go back in time more than a month or two ago.

[purerandomness]

Then that system obviously doesn't solve one of your pains.

I have to dig out older documents almost daily.

[matt_the_bass]

What types of things are you looking for so frequently? Maybe you could organize a subset of papers?

[pymai]

- if you need to retrieve things often

- if you need more than one box. will you still have a single box 10 years from now or will it be 2? good luck trying to retrieve something in 20 years when you have even more boxes

- it only takes 1 fire or flood to destroy all of your documents. once they are digital you can easily make copies and store them in a few different locations

tbh making digital copies isnt that complicated compared to throwing something in a box. i just scan everything into a year/month folder and do as you do... worry about finding them later. spending time tagging or naming stuff after theyve been digitised is optional.

[phreeza]

I do basically this but I store everything chronologically in big binders. Insertion is still O(1) and finding things is O(log n) if I know the date the document was generated. I keep large amounts of documents I never retrieve, and plan to do some culling in the future, but not having to agonize if something is worth keeping is worth it to me.

[mattlondon]

You'd be surprised how useful having all of your documents digitally available can be.

I've been doing this for years already (albeit using Google Drive - yes, some people dont trust Google - I understand that, but doesn't bother me) and these are some of the common use-cases where I find it really useful:

* Tax returns. This alone makes it worthwhile.

* Call-centers. You'll often have the reference/account number/etc you need quicker than the operator at the other end can look them up.

* Travelling. Pulling up travel insurance etc details from your phone when you're stranded in an airport is so useful.

* The inevitable "we need to see a copy if your birth certificate/driving license/passport/last 3 months of bank statements/bill from a utility to validate your identity" requests. Either email the PDF directly or print out and go - no box rumaging.

* Health Records. Looking up the name of those pills you were prescribed 18 months ago, or when you had vaccinations etc.

* Those moments when you're convinced you've already had your car serviced/paid that bill/renewed the warranty on your washing machine/dealt with something but cant quite remember. Tap-tap yeah there is the confirmation from the appliance manufacturer saying I am still covered by warranty - emailed it to the support people. Ball is now in their court. Job done - whats next on my to-do list?

It comes up surprisingly often. Sure, not every single day, but certainly enough to justify the very very very small time investment of scanning it and uploading the PDFs Google Drive (I am sure there are alternatives that work just as well). When you retrieve something, the time-savings totally make it worthwhile.

As someone else has said elsewhere, often when you need these documents it is a stressful situation - a death, an illness, an accident, something "wrong" going on financially etc. You dont want to waste time frantically digging through dusty boxes of paperwork trying to find something when you can just tap a few keys and get it in seconds with zero hassle.

I highly recommend it.

I "bootstrapped" my archive by heading into the office at the weekend and using the huge printers to scan in boxes full of old paper documents to PDFs. Now I top-up with a home scanner attached to my LAN - if you're looking to buy a scanner for home, make sure you get one with an automatic document feeder that can do both sides at once so you can just chuck the papers in and hit go, then collect the PDFs from your network drive.

[ValentineC]

> Now I top-up with a home scanner attached to my LAN - if you're looking to buy a scanner for home, make sure you get one with an automatic document feeder that can do both sides at once so you can just chuck the papers in and hit go, then collect the PDFs from your network drive.

Any suggestions for one? I have a Canon P-208, but it's close to useless for batch scanning.

[slantyyz]

I'm partial to Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanners. It's worth paying the extra money for a Fujitsu, imo.

The only catch is that you are supposed to replace the pick roller and pad assembly every year or so.

I would recommend buying a couple of extras in advance, as they will get harder to find and more expensive as time goes on.

Having said that, I didn't replace my pick roller/pad assembly until after 9 years of operation. After a few years it would have trouble feeding multipage documents, but most of the stuff I was scanning was only one or two pages. When I did eventually replace those parts, the scanner was basically as good as new.

[mattlondon]

I have an HP OfficeJet one which I guess is kinda "prosumer" (cant remember the number - 8600 or something). The ADF works, but is single-sided so that is why I am urging others to learn from my mistake :-)

I know that the cheapish Canon Maxify printers do duplex ADF (the Canon Maxify MB5150 is what I plan to buy next time my current HP one runs out of ink since the ink costs almost as much as the printer!), but I cant recommend it since I've not used it yet.

HTH.

[nh2]

HP OfficeJet Pro 8620. It's an all-in-one, but interestingly the best scanner for such purposes I've found so far (I'd love to find a better one).

Scans both sides, up to 50 pages in a batch. Open-source drivers, works well with Linux. Ethernet. Can drop it on on your SMB share.

[pjc50]

If you have zero retrievals, you can just bin everything. As you've said, it depends how often you want to retrieve something and whether you ever need to retrieve a number of things in a hurry.

[sschueller]

I like this idea. I only need to keep 10 years and almost never need to retrieve anything. So if I use 10 boxes I can just throw away the oldest.

[paulie_a]

Would it cause any real issues if you were unable to retrieve something? If the answer is no, toss the other 9 boxes

[thomasfedb]

This. I dispose of almost all the paper I ever receive. Anything really important can usually be reissued by whoever issued it.

[matt_the_bass]

I used to organize every bill in a file cabinet. Then a few years ago I switched to "throw everything for a quarter in a single folder." Now I'm about to switch to throw everything for the year in a single folder". (a few exceptions for major expenses like house, car etc). This allows me reduce the possible search space a lot with very little effort. Over the past few years I've found myself looking for 1 or two things from the past year. Total time spent was 10 minutes. This was way less time than filing everything.

[dhruvkar]

I agree with the sentiment that most papers have very little value in the long run.

So I have 4 'bins' to categorize physical papers - scan & keep, scan & shred, shred, throw.

This system usually eliminates a lot of papers that I would otherwise mindlessly/OCD'ly scan.