Scanning documents to reduce paper clutter
by Erin Doland on
Three months ago, my husband and I hit our limit and knew that we had to get the paper clutter in our house under control. Our paper clutter problem has since been greatly reduced and I would like to share some tips for how we accomplished this task in a series of posts on the topic.
Our filing cabinet was the worst of our paper monstrosity. Crammed into folders were papers that we wanted but didn’t necessarily need in tangible form. We knew that there were some papers that we had to keep in paper form — like mortgage documents, tax returns, and insurance policies — but finding them was next to impossible because of all of the other clutter. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted our filing cabinet to only include those documents that were at must-keep status.
To rid our home of the unnecessary papers, we invested in the Fujitsu ScanSnap (available for the Mac and PC) and scanned all of the papers that weren’t vital for us to have in paper form.
The ScanSnap is surprisingly small (about the size of a football) and takes up less of a footprint than the papers it scans. It comes with a copy of Acrobat Standard, which means that in addition to the image of the document you can also OCR the text. In one pass, it scans BOTH SIDES of a piece of paper in color or black and white, and it even deletes empty pages. It’s fast (up to 15 pages per minute based on quality settings), and it automatically straightens your pages with its de-skew function. And, the Mac version integrates with DevonTHINK Pro Office for great organizational help.
After having so much success with reducing the paper clutter in our filing cabinet, we went next to our magazines. We pulled out each article or image that we wanted to keep and scanned it. Now, I have files on my computer such as “sewing inspiration,” which are right at my fingertips.
If paper clutter is overwhelming your home, I highly recommend putting the money into buying a Fujitsu ScanSnap for either your Mac or PC.
Visit the whole Paper Clutter Begone series:
- Part 2 — Organizing digitally scanned data
- Part 3 — Paper file organization systems
- Part 4 — Shredding unnecessary paper
46 Comments for “Scanning documents to reduce paper clutter”
posted by Jeri Dansky on
Thank you! I had been eyeing the older ScanSnap (s500M) ever since I saw a demo quite some time ago, but the price was just a bit more than I wanted to pay. But I just ordered this one.
And there’s even a $100 rebate for purchases (of the Mac version) made from April 1 – June 30, 2007. See www.fujitsu.com/downloa.....7-0607.pdf
posted by Robert on
Thanks for pointing us to this great tool. I need to get rid of a ton of paper clutter!
posted by chelseagirl on
this series is great. But what to do about paper clutter which consists of Un-classifiable papers?
— flyers to shows you want to remember to go to
— newsletters form bank, investor etc
— pending items
I suppose on neat curent/inbox? or, force yourself to categorize?
HELLP!
-a magpie
posted by Erin on
chelseagirl … In the third paper clutter post, I discuss a filing system that has a program for active papers. So, stay tuned for it!
Also, if you haven’t read David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” let me suggest that you check it out, too.
posted by Russ Urquhart on
HI,
I had tried something similar to this a while back. I have a flatbed scanner attached to my Mac and I was using an OCR program (Readiris). My goal was to be able to scan and ocr a magazine article, and then store that as a searchable pdf, that retained the look of the original article. (Allowing me to throw away the paper version.)
I had spotty results. Somethings ocr’ed better than others.
I’m curious as to the specifics of your scanner settings and how that worked, e.g. what resolution did you scan your articles in? Did you keep any protographs in those articles? How well did the pdf generated match the original?
I appreciate any help!
Thanks
Russ
posted by inlimbo on
I’m confused. Does it support OCR? Tim Robertson’s MyMac.com Review on Amazon states that it doesn’t.
posted by Erin on
inlimbo — Yes, it does have OCR capabilities. The product ships with a version of Acrobat. I use it, and the OCR function, daily.
posted by inlimbo on
Thanks for the quick reply Erin! The Fujitsu ScanSnap is now in my wishlist!
Thanks again,
inlimbo
posted by Paige on
I’ve been looking at the ScanSnap for some time now, but all the comments I’m seeing leave me somewhat confused. I currently use a flatbed CanoScan LiDE 500F with my PowerBook and it works great! I put my documents on the platen, hit the “PDF” button and the application automatically launches and scans my doc with my preferred settings (200 dpi, grayscale). For multipage docs, I put the new sheet in and hit the “next” button (or escape key), after the last one I select “finish” (or enter). Then the Finder opens with my just scanned document selected. It’s a fast, streamlined process and there is no need to open additional software. From what I’m hearing with the ScanSnap, though, it has to scan the doc, then open Acrobat for the OCR. Doesn’t seem as slick as the Canon’s one-pass deal. But I am ever so tempted with the sheet feeder and double-sided scanning of the Fujitsu! P.S. I already own Acrobat Standard 7.0, so paying full price for the ScanSnap isn’t that enticing. I wish that had a cheaper version without the software for those that already have it.
posted by joejoe on
A neat idea, but it seems to me you can get a nice Laser printer All In One/Multifunction with sheet feeding scanner for less than the price of that Fujitsu.
posted by joejoe on
And replacing a standalone scanner and standalone printer with one device should count for some unclutter too.
posted by Erin on
JoeJoe — I actually own a 3-in-1 scanner/printer/photocopier. The company that produces it, however, stopped updating drivers for the scanner portion of it almost six months ago. Also, my 3-in-1 device doesn’t scan both sides of the paper at the same time, it is considerably slower, and the quality of the scanner in the 3-in-1 device is well below that of the ScanSnap. The all-in-1 device is a nice idea, but it doesn’t have the quality of the ScanSnap.
posted by Ken Silver on
I went paperless with the ScanSnap back in August 2006. It was a complete success! Here’s my blog article on the process along with some handy tips: kensilver.blogspot.com/.....ffice.html
posted by Anonymous on
$400 for a scanner?!? I mean. Really??!?!?
How do you justify that?
posted by PJ Doland on
It scans both sides of the page at once, and it comes with Acrobat. That’s how. This is a bargain for a duplex scanner.
posted by Metaphors on
Now if only I could get rid of Scanner Clutter. I don’t want this hulk in my house permenently.
posted by Metaphors on
Now if only I could get rid of Scanner Clutter. I don’t want this hulk in my house permanently.
posted by Mark Moline on
I’ve been using our scansnap since January to slowly get all our paper clutter under control. The scansnap is a professional document scanner. It is purpose-built…and it shows. A regular flatbed will never match the speed of the scansnap. A multi-use device (even with duplex scanning) will never match the scan quality or ease of use.
Ease of use is key. If it’s not easy to use you won’t use it. This thing just sits on your desk waiting for you to lift the cover and scan. No setup. No launching special apps. Just insert paper, press the button. A few seconds later you’ve got a PDF.
I’ve been using it with Yep (www.yepsoftware.com/) on the backend and it’s fantastic. You don’t need Yep, it just makes everything that much better, especially document retrieval. Yep lets you assign tags to the documents which makes it much more useful than just filing them away in a hierarchical folder structure.
One last comment on paper clutter, avoid paper if you can. Now that there’s an official place to store the electronic versions of our documents I feel better receiving all my bills this way. I get bank statements emailed as PDFs, credit card bills come in as PDFs, same with our insurance bill. Now I can just file those PDFs right along side all the scanned paper. Now there’s even less clutter!
Can’t say enough good stuff about the scansnap and Yep. Nothin’ left to do but
:-).
posted by Unclutterer » Archive » Reader question: How to store favorite correspondence? on
[...] Angela, you have a few good questions here about how to store mementos. As you anticipated, I do support letter scanning and photographing objects like birthday and holiday cards, ticket stubs, playbills, etc. I’ve written about this idea a few times in the following posts: Photographing your mementos and Paper clutter begone. [...]
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[...] but there is also one for the PC). I purchased it while doing research for Unclutterer’s Paper clutter begone! series, and continue to be fully satisfied with the purchase. It is definitely the single best [...]
posted by RashidVille » Blog Archive » Unclutter your paper & Lug a Mug on
[...] has been directly inspired by Unclutterer… Unclutterer issues that buying a Fujitsu ScanSnap is a great idea to unclutter one’s [...]
posted by Catherine on
Thank you for linking back to this article from the main page. I just purchased the ScanSnap S300, which seems to be a newer, highly portable version of the same product. It retails for $259, and scans a bit slower, I believe, but still! And I was inspired by the “getting rid of change” Unclutterer post, also an older one, to round up all of my change and take it to a Coinstar machine at the grocery store. I used my $80 of spare change to get an Amazon giftcard (thus, avoiding the Coinstar service charge) so my ScanSnap only took $180 off an actual credit card!
Unclutterer rocks.
posted by Ashish Ahuja on
Thanks for the information. Will use it to de-clutter my office
Regards,
CA Ashish Ahuja, FCA
A Roaming Blogger and a CA
Indian Chartered Accountant New Delhi India
Indian Company Formation Delhi India
posted by Nick on
In the article “My favorite organizing magazines” (unclutterer.com/2008/06.....magazines/) you write that you “pull out all of the articles, scan them”, but this scanner seems to only be able to read single sheets of A4 paper. Do you cut out all the pages in the magazines before scanning them?
posted by Rebekah on
Wish I could afford it…. a couple more years and the prices should be down far enough for us lowly humans…:-)
posted by Rebekah on
Oh I forgot…does anyone know if there are any services out there that will scan for you for a decent price? I have photos, documents, you name it. Could literally clear about 125 sq ft of living space if I could get this done reliably.
posted by Doug Ransom on
If you use the OCR feature (ABBY FineReader whcih comes with the ScanSnap), you end up with two PDF files in your folder (I scan everything to a “scantray” folder then file from there.
Here is an applescript to delete the initial scan once the OCR is complete: www.underdoug.ca/2008/1.....forms-ocr/
posted by Marie on
Rebekah may want to check out pixily.com. They offer a scan and archive service on a monthly fee basis. You can ship stuff off to be scanned and then either returned to you or shredded. You can also upload your own digital copies of documents. All is then available in a searchable on-line database which is password-protected. For my purposes, I decided the SnapScan was a better option, but was heavily considering this for a while.
posted by Suzyn on
Recently, the NY Times quoted Dag Spicer, curator of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley saying “consider paper as an archival medium” to combat “data rot.”
www.nytimes.com/2009/03.....=1&em
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posted by Another Deb on
I am so happy with my ScanSnap! I’ve been storing teaching materials into 3 and 4 inch binders, and since I never know what subject I may need to cover in the future (perhaps at the drop of a hat), I am reluctant to discard 20+ years’ worth of materials I have developed.
This month I began the process of turning 25 packed binders into PDF’s. So far I’ve converted 5 linear feet of paperwork using my ScanSnap. In about an hour, I can remove staples and paper clips, feed the scanner, and replace the paperwork in the 4 inch binder. This has been about ten thousand pages, double sided, so far. The scanner has run like a champ, even scanning those filmy transparencies!
You do have to remove the staples and make sure nothing is folded, like a brochure, or the feed will jam. Jams are super easy to take care of but it interrupts the “flow”.
I am not yet tossing the hard copies. They will now live in the classroom for use by other people in the department.
posted by Sooz on
We just got a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 and WOW, what a gre