Any parent would probably agree that school papers are the culprit for most of the paper pile ups at home. Now that school is out I have been sorting through last years school papers and getting them organized.

When the papers first come in I always do a quick view to see what I want to keep or what needs immediate action then toss the rest.

Dealing with your child’s papers certainly is one of the more emotional tasks you have to tackle when it comes to letting go. You are handling their school aged milestones.

Personally, I like to see how their handwriting and coloring has changed over time. Those pictures my kids create with their hand prints get me every time. Not only are they creating art but you can see how much they are growing by their hand prints.

Here is a quick and easy solution for tackling school time papers…

1. As papers come in make sure you are keeping them separated by child in a folder or box so you can easily decipher what belongs to who.

2. At the end of the year sit down with the papers, a trash bag, digital camera, or scanner.

3. Choose what pieces of art you want and take a picture or scan then into your computer.

4. Throw away the paper after you are done taking a picture.

For me this system has made things so much easier to be able to get rid of those papers. Now I won’t have to worry about them yellowing over time or taking up space. I can create a beautiful digital memory book for each child to showcase their creations.

You can also have fun with this, you don’t have to save every single piece of work they have done. Think of creative ways to showcase their work. I’ve decided that instead of taking a picture of each letter they have learned to write I will take a picture of the letters in their name and create a photo montage for one page of a book. Instead of documenting all of the colors they have learned take a picture of their favorite. Same with shapes. Since my preschool aged son is 4, I took pictures of the papers where he started writing the number 4. You can document age or year this way.

Tell me your thoughts…

How do you organize your school time papers?

What do you think about digitizing your child’s art?

For the full series click here… Paper Less Living: Simple Solutions For Downsizing Your Paper Pile Up

*Giveaway closed, Kelli you are the winner! I will be emailing you soon. Thank you everyone for entering the giveaway.

I remember as a young girl rummaging through a large tub of photos and memorabilia my grandmother had. I pulled this box out often and carefully examined each picture and document. As I write this I can see many of these images flashing through my mind. My favorites stuck with me after looking at them so much.

(I was always fascinated with pictures of my grandparents when they were younger. Cute couple. I wonder what my grandmother was thinking in this photo. After 55 years of marriage she still looks at him like that.)

While I still enjoy rummaging through old photos I am currently in awe of the digital age. In 2003 I bought my first digital camera and I haven’t looked back. While I still flip through old photos I love the ease of being able to pull up a slide show on the Mac, putting on some music and enjoying a trip down memory lane.

Recently I went through a bunch of my photos and realized how many I had that I didn’t really need. Some photos were duplicates, bad shots or of course a few that were taken with someones finger blocking the view. I had photos that I had taken when I was younger and apparently I would shoot tons of photos of one person doing something random. Did I really need 20 pictures of essentially the same shot? Um, no! So I picked my favorite.

(I know your loving that bee hive hairdo right! My mom is the tall blond. My aunt looks like she’s getting ready to whack my uncle across the head. He’s probably poking her in the back so I’m sure he deserves what is coming to him. )

I tackled my box of photos and purged all of the bad photos and duplicates. I now have a shoebox size container of photos and I labeled an envelope with each family members name to store the 8×10′s I have. I have a few old albums that have been passed down to me as well. The photos are all holding up pretty well but there are a few that are really showing their age.

(My Mom and I. Sorry for showing off the perm, Mom!)

I want to preserve these memories. What if the unthinkable happened? Photos are irreplaceable. I would love to be able to share all of these photos with the family but it would be to expensive to make enough copies of them all.

The answer is simple, SCAN those photos!  I sent in a batch of photos to iPreserve to have them scanned like I did with my magazine pages and I was so happy with the results! I love the fact that I can pull up these photos anytime I like and best of all they will be preserved forever! No more yellowing, tearing or fading. I can post them to my Shutterfly account and let my family browse through them as well then print what they want. Works for me!

(Me and my General Lee big wheel. Yes, I did and still do love the Dukes of Hazzard.)

Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me. Fun wasn’t it?

Now I want you to be able to take a trip like this on your own. iPreserve has offered one of my lucky readers a $50 gift certificate to scan your photos, too. That equals out to 100 pictures!

You can win two ways during this giveaway:

1. Leave a comment letting me know how you organize (or don’t organize) your photos.

2. Subscribe if you don’t already, and then leave a second comment telling me you did so.

You have until midnight, Tuesday, June 16th to enter.

A winner will be announced Wednesday, June 17th.

Remember there will be one new giveaway every Wednesday during the months of June and July! Come back for the next chance to win. Have a great summer everyone!

I’m a big believer in getting to the point when it comes to magazines. It seems like half the content these days are ads. I tackle my magazines when I have a few minutes here or there to give them a quick skim.

Magazines provide me with my paper dose of visual inspiration. While I get most of my organizing ideas from personal experience, reading and the internet,  there are a few magazines I love to thumb through looking for the latest and greatest ideas. When I come across an idea or picture I want to save for later reference I tear out the page and file it away. Of course the ideas I feel are blog worthy I share with you all here!

In the past I set up a filing system for the magazine pages. I had categories set up much like the categories I use on this blog. After time I had a little problem though. Have you heard “out of sight, out of mind”? Yep, that’s me. I pretty much have to have everything out in the open or I forget about it. A traditional filing system just doesn’t work for me that well.

After trying the filing method I finally got fed up and tried something new for my magazine pages. I wanted to try a three ring binder but the magazine pages would rip out too easily. I decided to give the Circa Notebook by Levenger a try. I used A-Z dividers in the notebook and stored each category under the corresponding letter. So under B I had bathroom ideas, bedroom ideas, etc. This method worked great and I was able to keep the notebook right on my desk to reference when I needed it. I could easily take out a page and scan it when I needed to and my system was essentially self purging because when I scanned a page to blog about it I could then throw out the magazine page.

Although my new notebook was working wonders, my ultimate goal for my office is to go Paper Less. I really wanted to scan in all of my documents but it was a time consuming task. So I decided to take the digital plunge. I contacted iPreserve to inquire about their services. I could send them my precious glossy pages and they would scan them and send them back to me on a disk.

And it was that easy. I purged the files I no longer wanted then I stacked them in order and shipped them off. And poof, like that they were gone. I got the pages back along with a CD. I tossed the pages and reveled at the feeling of letting go of the pile. Now I can do a quick search on my computer for the page I wanted and it pops up on my screen. Fabulous!

Now that I have the backlog scanned I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. Now that I have a faster scanner I will be able to maintain this system with little effort!

If you’ve ever had a medical emergency within moments it seems like you start getting bombarded with paper whether someone is asking you to fill something out or bills start coming in the mail. Some of you might even have two or more insurance companies and now with HSA accounts we even have a different bank account to deal with.

To downsize your medical paper pile up many of the same money matters rules apply:

1. Check your insurance provider’s website to see if you can receive EOB’s via email instead of paper form. Whichever format you get your EOB delivered to you check it with the bill to make sure it is right and then you can decide whether to toss or scan. I personally would scan it if it relates to an ongoing illness and toss if it is just a routine physical.

2. If you are deducting medical expenses on your taxes you need to keep your receipts for prescriptions and medical supplies. If you are storing everything electronically I would scan the receipts as well.

3. You can store most of your medical information on the computer and download it to a flash drive if you need to take the information with you.

4. If you have an HSA account opt to have your statements emailed to you instead of mailing.

Generally I would treat medical information as you would your financial files. I would personally keep the financial portion for 7 years but keep a file on hand to organize specific information regarding ailments and treatments taken.

I will go into more specifics on setting up electronic and paper based systems to organize your medical files another time. For now I want you to just think about how much paper you can cut back on by following these simple tips. Going Paper Less won’t work for all but for those of you able to take on the challenge I hope this series has been helpful so far.

Next I will share with you how I am going Paper Less with my photos and maybe you can too. For the full series click here…  Paper Less Living: Simple Solutions For Downsizing Your Paper Pile Up

One of the biggest issues that causes some of us to hold on to paper is simply not knowing what we need to keep, especially when it comes to financial documents. I will provide you with a couple of points of reference here, but I am not an accountant and you should consult one to see how this information fits your circumstances.

Bankrate offers a very easy to understand table regarding what financial records to keep and how long to keep them. Here is a summary of their recommendations:

• Taxes – Keep all tax related information for seven years.
• IRA Contributions – Keep permanently to prove you paid taxes on the money when it comes time to withdraw.
• Retirement/Savings Plan – From one year to permanently. Keep annual statements until you retire or close account.
• Bank Records – Save one year to permanently.
• Brokerage Statements – Save until you sell the securities.
• Bills – Save for one year or permanently.
• Credit Card Receipts and Statements – Save for 45 days up to seven years.
• Pay Stubs – Save for one year until you match up with end of year W-2.
• House Records – For six years after you sell your house.

Generally, when it comes to bills, receipts, credit cards and bank statements you would keep these for up to a year unless they are expenses you deduct on your taxes and then you would keep them for seven years. For example, if you own a business you would hold on to everything for seven years. If you have a business in your home and elect to deduct a portion of your utilities for business use you would save all of these personal bills for business records.

Insurance policies are not on the list but when your policy is updated or renewed, you can toss the old one and replace it with the new one.

When keeping up with the paper go digital in as many ways as you can. With each bank, investment, and credit card statement you get in the mail check online to see if they have a paperless option and get your statements emailed to you instead of snail mail. More and more utility companies are offering this option as well and a majority are now allowing online payments.

Personally I scan/download everything I can. I hold on to the digital version for 7 years. My rule of thumb is that if it is a current document that has an original signature I keep it in paper form. Everything else gets scanned.

I hope this guide gives you a better understanding of what you may need to keep for financial records and furthers you on your way to becoming Paper Less. I am open for discussion on any of these topics but remember I am not an accountant so you may want to check with one, I can only share my personal experiences and recommendations.