A Lot Less Paper

Jeremy is a firm believer in keeping paper. When we got married, I dutifully filed all of our bills and papers in folders neatly kept in a filing cabinet. When the filing cabinet got full, I would transfer the folders into a banker's box and store it in the closet. 16 years, a business and several rental properties later and we had quite pile of boxes. And my filing system down graded to throwing paper in a box like this:

One evening in June, Jeremy came home with a document scanner that he had rescued from the trash. I didn't really know how this would change my life until later that evening when he got it working and I saw the possibilities. This scanner can scan something like 30 pages a minute and saves them automatically in a specified folder on the computer. All I had to do was stick a pile of papers in the feed and walk away.

After a week or so I realized that if I was actually going to make it through the pile of boxes, I would need to set up a scanning table downstairs so that I could keep it going easier. That's what I did and as I circled through the house all day I added paper.

I found some treasures as I went through all that paper. This is probably my favorite. Land line phone bills from when I was in college at EMU and dating Jeremy. There were 11 page bills that were full of calls to Harrisonburg, VA. That would have been 1999. Thank goodness we didn't have texting then. I would never have gotten any studying done!

About six weeks later I was down to the last two boxes and a whole stack of folders that someone had piled on top of the boxes. By that point I was determined that I would finish!

Last weekend, after a bunch of rain, we had a perfectly still day and we burned 10 bags of paper. You'll never know the difference when you walk in my house that all this paper is gone, but I know it's gone!

The scanner is now on my desk where I can continue to scan and discard paper regularly. I also have one little folder where I will keep paper that we need to have on hand for a while.

My children can thank me in 50 years for this effort! ;)