Looking for something to do during the big coronavirus lockdown that many of the states (and countries) are facing? It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with all kinds of projects to knock out, and one very useful one is the act of turning all of your old files and documents into digital files to save some space around the home or office!
This is a practice we use here all of the time, as well as at home for some of us. The trick is to buy into an all-in-one (AIO) printer that has a nice document feeder tray for scanning, or into a stand-alone scanner if you already have a printer that simply doesn’t scan. Of course, if you already own an AIO printer or a scanner, then you are ready to go.
It’s important that the device you choose has the document feeder tray as it would take forever to scan items one by one within the scanner bed. You also want to make sure that the scanning function of the device offers “auto-duplex” or “single-pass duplex”, which means you can choose to automatically scan both sides of a document during the scan without ever having to turn anything over yourself. So drop a pile of documents into the tray, and it will start scanning one by one while flipping each document over to get both sides without any additional interaction from you (total bliss).
So, the idea is to start going through all of the old paperwork around the house that you keep physically filed somewhere. Most importantly, look for the documents that you could easily throw away if you had a digital copy. Some examples include old pay stubs, bill invoices, receipts, school notes, instructional material, warranty information, and anything else that is collecting dust somewhere in a drawer or filing cabinet.
Start a directory on your computer for “Scanned Documents” (or whatever else you’d like to call it), and inside that folder, you want to create additional folders that represent all the various categories you are scanning (receipts, bills, pay stubs, etc).
Then start making use of your scanning solution by dropping it all into the document tray, sections at a time. A lot of these scanners allow you to scan to PDF files which usually works best. You can typically save it instantly to a thumb drive plugged into the device or directly to a PC on the network.
Once you start scanning and making PDF files (or any other format of your choosing), you can now categorize these files into their appropriate folders on the computer. Verify everything looks like it scanned properly and you will be ready for the next step.
With everything scanned, you can start working on destroying all the physical documents by running them through a paper shredder or tearing them to shreds with your bare hands. Burn them in a bonfire out back. However you choose to do it, you will be creating all this new space around the home or office that used to be taken up by these files. Maybe now, you can reduce the number of filing cabinets, or use those drawers and cabinets for other purposes. A wonderful space-saving technique to pass some of the time away with.
Clearly, you want to also make a backup of all of the scanned files somewhere, let it be another drive or on a thumb drive (best solution) that can be thrown into a safe place somewhere. This way, if anything where to happen to the drive you scanned everything to, you will still have a secondary copy of everything.
The end result is physical documents take up a LOT of space as they build up. Scanned digital files do not. You can fill a (modern) hard drive with a lifetime of paperwork, and still, have plenty of space to go around. A much better trade-off than filing cabinets, drawers, and boxes all over.
An additional bonus to this is that depending on how you name your files (so be creative), they will be incredibly easier to find than buried in cabinets, because all you have to do is use the search option within your file manager and you could find what you are looking for in seconds.
Now onto the next task to pass time away with! Have any ideas? Feel free to share below in the comments!
