By Nanci Dixon
When we RV, we obviously don’t have the luxury of a file drawer, lots of cabinets, and nooks and crannies to stash stuff. And stash them we have! As I was trying to cram one more sheet of paper into the file drawer, I thought, “There has to be a better way!” While I had already weeded out older warranty booklets, instruction manuals, ancient tax forms, and receipts, there was still a lot left.
I made a quick call to our tax accountant to see what we had to save. He suggested we go through all our papers, scan them, put them on a hard drive or in the “cloud,” and only save the paper we actually needed.
So that’s what I did! I pulled out all our files, papers, and receipts from the drawers and cabinets. It grew to be a veritable mountain of paper!
Using my phone to take the photos, I set up the system I had used for documenting all of our non-digital photos in our old photo albums (more on that here), and it worked great. My iPhone has a scanner setting, or, of course, it can just take photos. I chose to take photos as I could save them more quickly. I already have two small LED lights and a stand for a cell phone. The system stores well, too!
Here was the process in digitizing my documents:
Day one: I just started photographing the documents, not paying a lot of attention to what I was taking or how I would save it. Bad move.
Day two: This time, I separated the segments by writing what I was photographing and the word “start” on a sticky note. I took a photo of that, clicked the series of documents, and wrote “end” on the sticky note and scanned it again. Now I didn’t need to read every pic to decide how to file.
Day three, four, five: I copied every piece of paper and organized them onto two separate hard drives. (You can find a variety of hard drives here.)
Day six: Took one hard drive to our safe deposit box. Both hard drives had all our previously scanned photos from our photo albums, too. First, I double-checked with our tax accountant on what papers to save. (When in doubt, consult a professional!)
Day six, evening: Enjoyed a good bonfire and lightened our load. Wow! Now I have lots of space to put more stuff in….
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:
- Tips from a pro: How to digitize your family photo albums
- How photographing your RV components can save the day
- How and why to photograph your tire sidewall info
- Paperwork organization: Keep your owner’s manuals, receipts, warranties in check
RVT1270
Most printers come equipped with scanners. These make an almost perfect copy of documents.
Some will even do double sided scanning.
Instead of saving them all to a massive hard drive, I use USB thumb drives. They are small, hold a lot of data and portable.
Plus, you can specify what type of data is saved on each one. Photos can be copied directly to them, and other documents can be categorized into different folders.
Of course with the AI explosion, these are starting to get fairly expensive. But so are most of the large hard drives, especially the SSD’s
I have used Dropbox for years and love it! It is organized by designated file folders. The search tool is super convenient and makes looking up what i need a cinch!
Thank you for the suggestions and links to the equipment, Nanci. Have a great week and safe travels!
Another great tip, Nanci!
Something else to add to this – unless you have three copies in two places you run the risk of losing important documents. A while back I shared the 3-2-1 backup system that will help make sure your stuff is always there.