Comments on: Letting Go of Paper

By: Ben Brooks

Ben Brooks — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:40:21 +0000

It took a while for me to let go and shred at fist as well. Now I do it without thinking about it. Not the best thing either, sometimes I shred things that I meant to keep. But usually the digital copy is sufficient.

By: Ricky Buchanan

Ricky Buchanan — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:07:13 +0000

@Arjun: Is there any particular reason why you can’t recycle shredded paper? I recycle mine!!

@Mark: I have a pile of paper on top of my shredder for exactly the same reason! It *is* hard to “let go” and be brave enough to shred stuff. My personal rule is if it stays on top of the shredder for a few weeks and I haven’t needed to retreive it then shredding it without re-checking is safe. And no, I’ve never needed to “rescue” anything during that week but it still makes me feel better.

I’ve been finding your “less paper” experiments very interesting – I can’t deal well with paper due to disability reasons and find digital stuff much more physically accessible as well as the other upsides like searchability and so forth. It’s interesting to see a perspective on “being digital” in that sense that’s not based in access/disability requirements which is what I’m used to thinking about.

Ricky Buchanan, ATMac

By: Ariane Benefit, Neat & Simple Living

Ariane Benefit, Neat & Simple Living — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:05:25 +0000

Mark, you are so not alone. Check out my series on why paper is difficult http://blog.neatandsimple.com/2007/10/organizing-pa-2.html
Especially the on on emotional attachment : )

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:38:04 +0000

@Arjun – I am doing my best to eliminate the intake of paper I don’t need. I’ve got a little ways to do, but overall that means that most of what comes in has private information that I can’t allow to be recycled. I figure if I can keep the paper from being produced in the first place I’m probably having more of an impact than trying to recycle it after it has been used.

My biggest complaint at this point is that even though I can sign up to get certain documents digitally, they require me to log in to a bunch of different places and “pull” them down. It would be so much more convenient if there was a way to have them all sent in an encrypted email. I could then grab them and put them into my document management software and skip the scanning process all together.

By: Arjun Muralidharan

Arjun Muralidharan — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:52:36 +0000

To me, making the decision to discard paper has always been a hard one.

If you recycle paper instead of shredding it to bits, that would be a good step for two reasons:

1. Environment and
2. the more practical reason that you need to collect a pile of paper somewhere in your house (I have a dedicated paper trash can next to my ordinary trash can). The paper goes out for recycling ones every three weeks, so it’s like a trash can on the computer that allows you to get back that paper copy – just in case.

Otherwise I’m quite happy throwing paper away I know I have digital copeis of. I keep certificates and important things like tax documents (not the bills and bank statements, just the official tax form) in paper form.

My physical filing limits itself to half a drawer of hanging A-Z folders.

I also don’t digitalize any university documents, though I plan to take notes on my Macbook Air when I get it, and download lecture slides instead of buying print copies. Saves money and trees.