I know that we have often talked about scanning papers and then tossing. This weekend, I started a scanning project for another reason.

I have always used a paper planner. Since 1994, I have used the same brand, same size. I toss the daily pages but keep extensive notes on the weekly pages which I keep in small binders. I do keep these pages because I refer back to them often.

A few weeks ago, I spilled a bunch of water on my current planner address pages. Luckily, I had just bought replacement pages and was planning to update them anyway. Most of the pages stuck together and ripped when I tried to separate them. For anything handwritten in them, the information is lost. Luckily, a lot of the address/phone info is in my computer.

It dawned on me that if anything happened to my paper weekly daytimer pages in the binders, I'd be devastated.

Since I have a document feeder, this is a slow but not undoable project. If I had to do each single page on a flat scanner bed, there's no way I'd do it. I'm doing 12 pages at a time which is 6 weeks. I then save the file with the dates and files those in yearly folders. I've done about 4 years in the last 2 days.

I have no intention of getting rid of the paper pages because 1.) I have plenty of room for them and 2.) I like flipping through the binders often.

I feel so much better knowing that the pages will be backed up and safe in case anything happens. They are also saved to my satellite backup so even if there's fire, etc, it's all safe.

I did the same for important hard copy documents and scanned them to keep as a backup.

They are stored on my computer and on offsite storage using DVDs/CDs.

An external hard drive these days doesn't cost too much, and can give you peace of mind in case your computer breaks down.

So that you have all your important documents stored on your external hard drive.

The morale of the story is don't wait for a disaster to happen before you take action to get organized.

Very wise of you ChefSam to plan ahead. :-)

I have never done the scanning thing except for our photo collection.

These are really good ideas Chef.

Debra I have scanned important docs that I gave to my mother to keep when we were traveling for longer periods of time. I really should scan those and keep a file in a safe place of every document we keep permanently

Thanks!

I don't scan most documents because I don't have a separate scanner. It's a feature built into my printer. It has come in handy, but there is no way to scan quickly, so I do that only when I really have to.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I have the scan capability. It has saved me trips to copy/fax centers, for one thing.

We travel a lot and always scan travel itinerary, contact list, passport, medical card, driver's license & x-tra passport photos so that we could pick up this information anywhere we can access a computer. We have had so many friends/colleagues who have had their passports stolen which is a huge hassle overseas.

I always scan all the cards I keep in my wallet. If my purse gets stolen, I have it

Yes, this is an excellent idea. My purse was stolen in spring 2009, and without copies of some of the cards, it would have taken me longer to get replacements.

I highly recommend scanning everything, not just the "main" this such as driver's license. I actually carry fewer cards than I used to, because I realized I don't use many of them too often. But I have copies of all of them, just in case they are needed, and the backs as well as the fronts.

What can you scan and then toss today?

Cyd, you say you can access your scanned copies of passports, etc. anywhere you can get to a computer. But how do you do that? I can see doing e-mail and certain other things from abroad, but how do you enter your computer externally? In an office I used to work in, some of the staff worked from home part of the time, using something called VPN, but I didn't have that. What do you use? Even if you had a remote feature such as VPN at home, you wouldn't have it if you were traveling.

I can access all of my files via my offsite backup - Mozy. Just need to log-in and download a file.