4 ms·

I'd rather go to 5 web sites and download PDFs than open 5 envelopes, throw them away, and sort out different paper documents into different binders or folders:

I'd rather go to 5 web sites and download PDFs than open 5 envelopes, throw them away, and sort out different paper documents into different binders or folders: nobody is paying me for the wasted time of my life to do that either :) How do you organise your paper documents?

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
This can easily be streamlined to consume little time by: - Realizing that whenever you need to extract some old document in the future for reference / proof, you'll likely have a date range when it happened to go looking for it. And needing something old happens rarely enough that the overhead of searching for it can be neglected, so you'll layout your binders to make putting things away fast, not searching things. And the older things become the less likely it is that you'll ever need them again. So sorting by date is important. - Thus realizing that any finished documents can go to a SINGLE binder which is sorted by date, you don't need a separate one for healthcare, utilities, whatever. You don't even need registers in the binder, just flat date sorting. - Therefore, you'll only be having 3 binders: "ToDo", "Done" and "Constantly needed" (the latter is for contracts for example). Sort the contents of "ToDo" and "Done" by date. Adding new paper will be quick because new stuff arrives close to the most recent date so you don't have to search a lot for the place to insert it at. AND: Make sure to mark the date on every document with a highlighter of always the same color so you can easily spot the dates when inserting. TL;DR: Most documents will go to a single or two sorted-by-date places, just like your email inbox. This makes adding things fast.
- necovek 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing your approach: I do like the fact you are optimizing for "putting away things". The amount of documentation you have (and have to go back to) is probably on an entirely different scale to what I am personally dealing with: this would never work for me, since just a date would make finding stuff almost impossible.
  - RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
    Thanks for the appreciation :) I put a lot of thought into this system so it's nice to know someone at least took notice of it! Your problem of larger scale may or may not be alleviated by the details I left out for simplicity and because I assumed a typical reader may have a low scale: - In practice my "ToDo" and "Constantly needed" folders do have registers such as "health care" etc. as those are the ones where I usually have to search for things. The date sorting there is inside the registers. For "ToDo" I also color-code the registers by priority and sort them by priority. - The "Done" folders have a register for each year. For very high scale you might add registers for month. The folders are also labeled on the outside with their years. To make it easy to access things which you might have to go back to, you could add "look here!" registers which do not affect the date-sorting, i.e. like bookmarks.
    - necovek 4y ago
      Maybe it's not just the scale, but how much I can remember of when something happened: monthly registers would require me to search a number of them for a bunch of reasons as I might not be sure exactly when something happened, making it impractical.
oezi 4y ago
I bought a duplex scanner and haven't looked back. Everything gets shredded unless it is required (contracts, official documents).
- 72deluxe 4y ago
  This is also perfect for keeping a digital copy of everything in the pursuit of the dream of being a digital nomad we all secretly harbor.
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Paperless ng Make your scanner put files in a place that Paperless can read them, then Paperless OCRs the file, makes it searchable, somehow finds the date of the documents, auto tags if you have it setup, and basically is a dream. I don't organize them anymore, if I need an old document I search for some text in it or by date. https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng There is a newer Paperless ngx that I have to upgrade to at some point.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  Paperless-ngx looks pretty cool! But do you have any recommendations for a scanner that has the required feature?
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    I use an old Epson Workforce WF-7100. This printer does two sided scanning on the ADF, and you can create presets for color, black and white, etc. Mine was given to me out of a garage and has some wear and tear - the ADF jams a lot, so sometimes I have to use the glass. As long as the device can scan to PDF into a network folder, I think most scanners/printers will work. Paperless works by monitoring a folder you choose - it doesn't care how files get to that folder. It's very common for most all-in-one printer/scanners to be able to save to a Windows/SMB network share. In my case on the Linux box running Paperless, I also installed and setup Samba and exposed a share for the scanner. An engineering firm I used to work for rented Kodak i2600 document scanners from the company providing their printers - and they were constantly scanning and these devices didn't mess up. If I did high volume scanning I'd try to get one of those.
emodendroket 4y ago
What are you going to do with a bank statement from a few months ago anyway? You will never look at it.
- sowbug 4y ago
  It becomes relevant during a divorce, or a capital gain or loss that has expenses related to the basis. Sometimes it's to your advantage not to have the documentation, but those situations are often zero-sum, so the other party will go the extra mile to find whatever is missing.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    In those rare circumstances where someone wanted to see an old statement I've never had difficulty logging in and finding the statements online.
    - sowbug 4y ago
      Maybe you live elsewhere, but in the US it's common for statements to be available for only seven years, and if you close an account, its online statements are gone for good. Bad marriages and good investments can last far longer than that.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        I've always gone with the IRS advice that nothing older than 7 years is needed. Maybe someday I'll regret it but so far it hasn't happened.
        sowbug 4y ago
        Yeah, that's the right number, but the context is slightly incorrect. If in 2022 you claim a lowered capital gain based on a home renovation you did in 2001, then you need to save those 2001 receipts for seven years, i.e. until 2029. The date on the receipts doesn't matter; the seven-year clock starts ticking only when you involve them in a taxable event.
dotancohen 4y ago
> How do you organise your paper documents? I just throw them in a box, without even opening them. On the off chance that I ever need one, I go to the box and fish out all the envelopes from that bank, and look for ones from the likely date range. That is, I optimize for quick storage at the expense of slow retrieval. But even the slow retrieval isn't bad.
- RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
  I hope you never die so your heirs don't have to deal with this ;)
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    It's my way of staving off assassination attempts among my heirs.

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago

This can easily be streamlined to consume little time by: - Realizing that whenever you need to extract some old document in the future for reference / proof, you'll likely have a date range when it happened to go looking for it. And needing something old happens rarely enough that the overhead of searching for it can be neglected, so you'll layout your binders to make putting things away fast, not searching things. And the older things become the less likely it is that you'll ever need them again. So sorting by date is important. - Thus realizing that any finished documents can go to a SINGLE binder which is sorted by date, you don't need a separate one for healthcare, utilities, whatever. You don't even need registers in the binder, just flat date sorting. - Therefore, you'll only be having 3 binders: "ToDo", "Done" and "Constantly needed" (the latter is for contracts for example). Sort the contents of "ToDo" and "Done" by date. Adding new paper will be quick because new stuff arrives close to the most recent date so you don't have to search a lot for the place to insert it at. AND: Make sure to mark the date on every document with a highlighter of always the same color so you can easily spot the dates when inserting. TL;DR: Most documents will go to a single or two sorted-by-date places, just like your email inbox. This makes adding things fast.

necovek 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your approach: I do like the fact you are optimizing for "putting away things". The amount of documentation you have (and have to go back to) is probably on an entirely different scale to what I am personally dealing with: this would never work for me, since just a date would make finding stuff almost impossible.
- RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
  Thanks for the appreciation :) I put a lot of thought into this system so it's nice to know someone at least took notice of it! Your problem of larger scale may or may not be alleviated by the details I left out for simplicity and because I assumed a typical reader may have a low scale: - In practice my "ToDo" and "Constantly needed" folders do have registers such as "health care" etc. as those are the ones where I usually have to search for things. The date sorting there is inside the registers. For "ToDo" I also color-code the registers by priority and sort them by priority. - The "Done" folders have a register for each year. For very high scale you might add registers for month. The folders are also labeled on the outside with their years. To make it easy to access things which you might have to go back to, you could add "look here!" registers which do not affect the date-sorting, i.e. like bookmarks.
  - necovek 4y ago
    Maybe it's not just the scale, but how much I can remember of when something happened: monthly registers would require me to search a number of them for a bunch of reasons as I might not be sure exactly when something happened, making it impractical.

oezi 4y ago

I bought a duplex scanner and haven't looked back. Everything gets shredded unless it is required (contracts, official documents).

72deluxe 4y ago
This is also perfect for keeping a digital copy of everything in the pursuit of the dream of being a digital nomad we all secretly harbor.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago

Paperless ng Make your scanner put files in a place that Paperless can read them, then Paperless OCRs the file, makes it searchable, somehow finds the date of the documents, auto tags if you have it setup, and basically is a dream. I don't organize them anymore, if I need an old document I search for some text in it or by date. https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng There is a newer Paperless ngx that I have to upgrade to at some point.

sureglymop 4y ago
Paperless-ngx looks pretty cool! But do you have any recommendations for a scanner that has the required feature?
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  I use an old Epson Workforce WF-7100. This printer does two sided scanning on the ADF, and you can create presets for color, black and white, etc. Mine was given to me out of a garage and has some wear and tear - the ADF jams a lot, so sometimes I have to use the glass. As long as the device can scan to PDF into a network folder, I think most scanners/printers will work. Paperless works by monitoring a folder you choose - it doesn't care how files get to that folder. It's very common for most all-in-one printer/scanners to be able to save to a Windows/SMB network share. In my case on the Linux box running Paperless, I also installed and setup Samba and exposed a share for the scanner. An engineering firm I used to work for rented Kodak i2600 document scanners from the company providing their printers - and they were constantly scanning and these devices didn't mess up. If I did high volume scanning I'd try to get one of those.

emodendroket 4y ago

What are you going to do with a bank statement from a few months ago anyway? You will never look at it.

sowbug 4y ago
It becomes relevant during a divorce, or a capital gain or loss that has expenses related to the basis. Sometimes it's to your advantage not to have the documentation, but those situations are often zero-sum, so the other party will go the extra mile to find whatever is missing.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  In those rare circumstances where someone wanted to see an old statement I've never had difficulty logging in and finding the statements online.
  - sowbug 4y ago
    Maybe you live elsewhere, but in the US it's common for statements to be available for only seven years, and if you close an account, its online statements are gone for good. Bad marriages and good investments can last far longer than that.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I've always gone with the IRS advice that nothing older than 7 years is needed. Maybe someday I'll regret it but so far it hasn't happened.
      - sowbug 4y ago
        Yeah, that's the right number, but the context is slightly incorrect. If in 2022 you claim a lowered capital gain based on a home renovation you did in 2001, then you need to save those 2001 receipts for seven years, i.e. until 2029. The date on the receipts doesn't matter; the seven-year clock starts ticking only when you involve them in a taxable event.

dotancohen 4y ago

> How do you organise your paper documents? I just throw them in a box, without even opening them. On the off chance that I ever need one, I go to the box and fish out all the envelopes from that bank, and look for ones from the likely date range. That is, I optimize for quick storage at the expense of slow retrieval. But even the slow retrieval isn't bad.

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y ago
I hope you never die so your heirs don't have to deal with this ;)
- dotancohen 4y ago
  It's my way of staving off assassination attempts among my heirs.