Comments on: Life Downsizing and Simplifying the Boomer Way

By: Mr. GoTo

Mr. GoTo — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:29:31 +0000

Dawn: We have a shredder for discarded documents which is then sent to recycling. Fortunately for us, losing internet connectivity is a rare event. If it ever does down at the office, I can go home and work.

By: Mr. GoTo

Mr. GoTo — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:27:38 +0000

Joe: I rarely need hard copies and if I do, they are printed on demand from our system. Then they are tossed away. In fact, we now have large wall mounted flat panel displays in our conference rooms so that “documents” can be jointly viewed by meeting participants without anyone having to use paper.

By: Mr. GoTo

Mr. GoTo — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:24:38 +0000

Ann: Most of my legal “paper” is now electronically communicated to and from the US Patent and Trademark Office as PDF files so it is never in paper form to begin with. (This is one area where our government has done a great thing with its own paper handling.) Plus, most of my clients prefer email communications so no paper is generated there either. The rest (not much) is scanned by my assistant in our document center where we have large multifunction printers/scanners/copiers. We have a practice management software system that makes it very easy to store, index, organize, and find electronic documents – much better than old school filing cabinets.
Thanks for reading!

By: Ann

Ann — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:14:15 +0000

Very impressive, not to mention motivating! How did you scan/file all the paper? Did you vend that out or use something like Neat Receipts? And thanks for all the great posts, which I follow using RSS.

By: averagejoe

averagejoe — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:32:50 +0000

I was thinking about doing this but what do you do when you need a hard copy of something, say, from 3 years ago? As in, a tax audit? Do you bring your computer with you and have the agent look at your screen (along with all the other info?)

Just wondering.

By: dawn

dawn — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:47:21 +0000

Wow, that’s pretty impressive. Still, I have not embraced online record keeping completely. And there are enough times when the Internet connection is lost due to interconnectivity issues that i’d be hard pressed to give up my paper filing system.

Instead of just throwing used copy paper away, perhaps your landfill accepts it, along with junk mail, for recycling. I never throw copy paper away anymore.