Home filing of paperwork

[Slow.Patrol]

Personally I love the online stuff nowadays. Electric bill, tax returns, council tax, banking. However I live with someone who prints out every receipt, bill and document and wants them kept, forever. They have bank statements going back 40 years and receipts for stuff they no longer own.

The issue is, I do the filing as it is kept in my office and in all honesty I am finding it a bit overwhelming. And if I am overwhelmed, God help the executors who will need to sort it out when we snuff it.

I am apparently in the dog house as an important bit of paper has gone missing. I have never seen this bit of paper, but it is my fault.

Would it be unreasonable if me to withdraw my filing services and just put everything in a box and then put the box in the loft when it is full?

[Colonel Cupcake]

Could you scan / download as a PDF to a memory stick? I do this to about 3 different memory sticks and make sure that one is nowhere near the house.

You could then discretely dispose of all the paperwork a bit at a time and if the other person wants to see something, you can easily print it out.

[Slow.Patrol]

Colonel Cupcake said:

Could you scan / download as a PDF to a memory stick? I do this to about 3 different memory sticks and make sure that one is nowhere near the house.

You could then discretely dispose of all the paperwork a bit at a time and if the other person wants to see something, you can easily print it out.

Yeah. I won't be doing that with 40 years of bank statements.

I did try to get them to dispose of them, but apparently they are "interesting".

[Spare tyre]

We purchased a house that had not been cleared from the previous guy

He had every bit of paper work for everything from when god was born

Took several estate car boot trips to the tip to get rid of it, was incredible

[essayer]

A print shop is going to be about 10-20p/page in bulk so is it maybe worth getting the lot scanned as a one-off then getting rid of all paperwork over say 6 years (initially..) and keeping digital copies? Easy to file and sort in Dropbox, etc, with a USB key or two as backup.

Then new stuff is quite easy with apps on phones etc, just take a photo and it uploads an OCR'd PDF to Dropbox. Dump it in a storage box per year, get rid after a few years?

[SpidersWeb]

Slow.Patrol said:

Personally I love the online stuff nowadays.
....
However I live with someone who prints out every receipt, bill and document and wants them kept, forever.
...
The issue is, I do the filing as it is kept in my office and in all honesty I am finding it a bit overwhelming.
...
I am apparently in the dog house as an important bit of paper has gone missing. I have never seen this bit of paper, but it is my fault.

Would it be unreasonable if me to withdraw my filing services and just put everything in a box and then put the box in the loft when it is full?

Unreasonable? My response would be quite 'robust' than that!

If they want physical paper copies then they arrange for physical paper copies and they file and store those physical paper copies in *their* office.

Personally I haven't kept paper copies of anything in a decade.

Everything is now either on electronic statements, and those few things that still arrive by paper are scanned using the iPhone Notes app to produce a PDF, and then everything stored away, both locally in multiple places and remotely in a range of cloud storage services.

[sospan]

Earlier this year I had a clearout of a filing cabinet. It is set up with folders that keep stuff where it needs to be. I was amazed at how much had built up in there! I shredded a lot of unnecessary stuff that I was simply dropping into the correct folder and kept summarry papers only. A big culprit for junk papers were folders of user manuals, handbooks etc where the gadjets/equipment was long gone. I prefer on- line versions and scanned copies saved on a laptop and backed up onto hard drives ( I have 2 ).
We do an annual review with a financial advisor and as part of prepping for it I clear out any built up junk papers.
When we moved house 7 years ago we had a clearout of hardware, papers, general junk. We have recently had another clearout to auctions and have been pleased with the return!
One thing we now do is toughen up on keeping stuff. Instant decision rather than put it off.
This winter there will be a further sorting of paperwork and stuff to sell. What's left to sell is above charity shop level, that stuff has already gone.

[bigpriest]

Slow.Patrol said:

Personally I love the online stuff nowadays. Electric bill, tax returns, council tax, banking. However I live with someone who prints out every receipt, bill and document and wants them kept, forever. They have bank statements going back 40 years and receipts for stuff they no longer own.

The issue is, I do the filing as it is kept in my office and in all honesty I am finding it a bit overwhelming. And if I am overwhelmed, God help the executors who will need to sort it out when we snuff it.

I am apparently in the dog house as an important bit of paper has gone missing. I have never seen this bit of paper, but it is my fault.

Would it be unreasonable if me to withdraw my filing services and just put everything in a box and then put the box in the loft when it is full?

I suspect the cold reality is when the time comes, someone will take the entire collection and simply bin it so keeping the lot in one place will make it easier for them.