It’s now December which means I turn 40 this month. It’s by that date that I vowed to myself I’d have all my possessions pared down to what I really want to own.
I’ve been doing quite well with decluttering my “stuff stuff” but had somehow declined to remember that in our 2 drawer file cabinet I had quite a bit of “paper stuff.” I waded into that mess today and have compiled a sizeable pile of personal papers that I need to go through this next week.
The point of this blog entry, though, is to share a de-cluttering tidbit that I just discovered today. I had saved in the file cabinet about a half dozen articles from magazines. They contained information, stories or interviews that I wanted to be able to reference. In fact, while looking at them today I still wanted to keep them for reference.
I initially sat down on the couch to read them all again and reassess whether they were worth scanning into my computer. Then, on a lark, I decided to google the articles. That turned out to be a great idea. Not only was I able to find the online versions of articles from 2007 but I was able to find online versions of articles from 1999!
I compiled the web addresses and info into an email, emailed it to myself for archival storage in a Gmail folder and I also stored the info in a Simplenote on my iPod Touch for reference whenever I wanted.
So, I saved time from having to re-read them, saved time from having to scan them and am now able to recycle the physical paper articles and get rid of more clutter from the files. Win, win, win!
You have to be careful because sometimes … actually, a lot of times….. internet sites disappear, making your link useless. You might do better to go to each site, dump the article into a .doc file, and upload your doc files into some cloud storage.
That’s a great idea Marti, thanks!
Your idea is brilliant Craig! As is Marti’s. Woe, however, to the soul who attempts to pare my clippings files (plural) to disc. I’m purposely leaving them to last!
I used to bookmark but after being burned one too many times from a website going away on me I started using Evernote to clip articles to save copies of everything online to ensure that it will not go away on me. Even with the free account you can also download a desktop client which lets you sync a local backup copy to ensure that even if Evernote’s website were to go away that your saved articles will still be safe on your computer.
John, I read your comment and promptly had to smack myself in the forehead. I use Evernote and have done the very thing you are proposing in your comment. I have NO idea why I didn’t just do that in the first place. Well, I’m going to go do that right now! Thanks