Scanner

[Jaffa]

I've decided its time to de clutter and tackle the boxes of magazines/photos/papers.
I have a problem with paper clutter, so need to tackle it once and for all (sounds good), as all I seem to do is reduce
but not tackle it long term.

Has anyone bought a scanner to tackle these items, I do have an all in one printer/scanner/copier. But I'm guessing that for lots of scanning, people tend to buy a compact good quality scanner, as opposed to just a general type.

What has anyone experience been with getting rid of paper type clutter and buying a scanner?.
I live in the UK, so any recommendations for any make/models please.

Jaffa

[backpack]

I can relate.


To save articles, important documents and pictures:

Can your an all in one scanner/printer, do 2 sided scanning? If so no need to get a new one.

I don't know of a paper feed scanner as opposed to a flat bed scanner, which is a pain to use, that has a small footprint and is designed for home use.
I am sure other forum members know more about that.

I like Brother because it can do 2 sided scanning and cheap printing.

You will need an hard copy inventory list of what is saved in your external drive, so that you can start when you left off, it usually takes multiple days to get everything from paper to digital form.

In addition to the scanner/printer, a fax function is always useful if you have a landline and deal with old fashioned business that wants paper instead of emailed documents. I am thinking of appraisers and the people involved in the inheritance business.


Get Solid State Drive external Hard Drives with an s to save all your pictures and scanned documents, save everything in at least 2 hard drives and a third one for future backup.

Buy some of those memory sticks as well.


Get a shredder. It will provide you with upcycled ecologically sound packing material.

The summer month is great to hunt for reasonably priced gifts for the Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc...
It is also a good time to find pretty boxes, tins, baskets, fabric containers at craft fairs, flea market...

Note that getting gifts and items to present them sounds counterproductive to declutering, but it will help with the task of turning paperwork burden into something positive.

Alternatively, the shredded paper can be used to pack fragile stuff for a move.



I do hope you have kept your Tom Bihn boxes, they are wonderfully sturdy to keep all sort of stuff.
I have needlework yarn in one of them, documents in another.

I avoid online photo archival services, especially after one of them blocked access to users, unless they paid hundreds of dollars to get their own pictures.


To prevent future accumulation of paperwork:


Donate the magazines to schools, doctor offices, libraries, nursing homes...

Remove every subscription that doesn't offer e-magazines, e-newspaper or non-profit e-newsletters.

Email (with a non essential email address) all non-profits/charities that solicit you by snail mail, tell them to remove you from their mailing list immediately, pointing out that if they can waste so much on mass mailing, they don't need your money.


I hope this help, the post sounds a bit mechanical but that is how I worded it in my move organizing journal.

[Jaffa]

Thanks for your helpful advice.....I do have an 3 in 1 flatbed scanner, but not sure if the quality is what I would consider good enough for my box of photos that I'm wanting to digitalise (?) is that a word?.
I usually throw any paperwork on my wood burning stove, but obviously would have to wait a while for that to happen again.
One of the minimalist websites ' The minimalists' did recommend a paper feed scanner?, but its based in the states and its a few years old of date.
I would be more inclined to borrow/rent a decent scanner for my photos, if buying new was going to be expensive.
I haven't kept any TB boxes, as tend to reuse/recycle them, and don't always get my TB bags in boxes..

Thanks
Jaffa

[DeBru]

My tech savvy friends all recommended an app for my iPhone called iScanner. I used it to scan photos dating back to World War I era, as well as tax documents and it’s done very well.

[kathryn]

I also have a ton of photos in boxes going back over 20 years. I've been slowly putting them into acid-free notebooks with photo corners so that they are at least somewhat organized--at the same time I am tossing duplicates (remember free double prints?) and bad shots.

I do want to scan them all as a more long-term and smaller footprint solution, and since I also have most of the negatives I'd like to get hi-res scans of those, too.

One solution I have been looking at is using a scanning service. The one I am most interested in based on reviews and TOS is Fotobridge. It's very expensive, though, so I want to do the sorting first. That way, I won't be paying to scan crappy photos.

I would suggest that since you are looking for a photo-specific solution here, you might ask at a local camera store for suggestions. Maybe you will be lucky and they will rent high-quality scanners or have a cost-effective scanning service??

For paperwork: any inexpensive, sheet-feed + flatbed scanner is going to be more than sufficient. Get yourself in the habit of open, scan, shred for important mail to manage the buildup in the future.

ETA: regarding magazines, my only subscription is to the New Yorker. Pretty sure they don't have a digital-only option, but I get the digital copy on my Kindle and have the paper copy sent to my grandmother's house. She loves it

[BPritchard]

For over fifteen years or so I have eliminated all paper bills, statements, etc. All my bank, credit card, utility, etc accounts are set up as "paperless". Email is received when statement is ready. I then download to a special named folder that is date based. These folders are backed up daily to my NAS personal drive and cycled through three monthly individual thumb drives.

Refer to https://lifehacker.com/5977082/what-...-should-i-keep

I scanned statements previously with a multiple function printer to JPEG files.

Presently I use a Brother DS620 portable scanner. It only copies one side. Other side you have to feed document again. Brother has the same type of scanner that scans both sides in one pass -- DS700D.

The scanner came with Document Management System PaperPort which worked fine for a freebie. I scan to a PDF file.

My Epson MFC printer died about 6 months ago and I replaced it with a Brother MFC-J485DW which has a flatbed scanner. I'm using [Continuous Ink Supply System with Ink Bottle Set] for Brother LC203 LC205 MFC-J4320DW MFC-J4420DW MFC-J4620DW MFC-J5520DW MFC-J for my ink supply. Works great but not for photos.

BTW, I previously had a special photo printer I used for photos. Then the cost of using Walgreens, CVS, etc became more cost effective.

I used this system to keep electronic copies of documents when my wife ran a Child Care business from our home. Some paper documents had to be kept, but these were eliminated when appropriate: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small...i-keep-records.

As for old print photos, I scan multiple photos in the printer's flatbed at 1200 or more to a TIFF file. I then use Photoshop Elements to separate the individual photos into PSD files for further manipulation.

[rafoster]

Fujitsu ScanSnap 1300i

You can get this on Amazon or any office supply store.

Scans both sides at once.

[Jaffa]

Thanks for your replies...Im sorting out my old magazines, most of them will be going to a local doctors surgery.I realised that keeping 12 -6 magazines are going to be out of date. My ideas for redecorating have changed, and can get inspiration online..Then I will be looking at scanning next. Sort it out first, so theres less to scan in the first place!
I have 4 white ikea storage boxes that I want to digitalise, 1 down - 3 to go.
1 photos, 1 old documents, 1 old birthday/Christmas cards etc - sentimental stuff.

Jaffa

[rabergnc]

Another recommendation for the Scansnap. It will scan in duplex, eliminate blank pages if you want, has multiple resolution settings, does black and white as well as color. It's also fast and has a small footprint on your desk. It is more pricey than an iPhone app but in my experience for a lot of pages, well worth the price of admission.

[turnleftbrighteyes]

If you go with the Scansnap recommendations, and you're a Mac user, I highly recommend Devonthink Pro Office to organize all those scans. It's amazing software (and currently the main reason I'm remaining loyal to Mac right now, as I truly can't imagine organizing my digital life without it.) There's a bit of a learning curve, but worth it.

[Jaffa]

Thanks for your helpful replies..Ive been trying to reduce what I need to scan..I used to collect home magazines, for the pics/ideas for future house moves. Ive realised, that my ideas have changed over the years, Im never going to go for something big/fancy and expensive, plus the magazines are 11 years out of date. Plus, I can always look on line, for ideas for future house(s).
I have 4 ikea white boxes 1..photos 2..payslips,tax papers,letters. 3...files from old courses. 4..sentimental stuff greeting cards.
Ive emptied 1, so down to 3 boxes.
Thought it would be better to reduce first before converting to digital
Thanks
Jaffa

[kathryn]

3...files from old courses.

This was me--I had literally been out of grad school for 10+ years before I finally got around to throwing notes/term papers/etc. away. Not just from grad school, either; some dated back to college. Yikes!

[Amy]

A couple of suggestions:

1) Evernote Premium (about $45/yr- better than the free version)
I use Evernote to store all my text-oriented documents and scans-- things like contracts, warranties, order confirmations, scans of recipes or handwritten notes, etc. The reason is that it has the best OCR in the industry-- it can find anything in any document instantaneously-- INCLUDING things that are handwritten, or text in a photo, etc. Uncanny! And (unlike Devonthink) it works on any platform/device and syncs everywhere, which is good if you need to access stuff on the go. I tend to use my iPhone/s camera app for scanning things directly into Evernote, simply because it's a high-res "scanner" that you already own. Evernote has a feature that will straighten it out and fix the lighting/contrast on documents so they're very easy to read.

We use Evernote in our music business to scan all our orders, invoices, and other daily paperwork that used to be stored in file cabinets. What's great about it is that you can search for anything and find it instantly. It's totally eliminated the need for paper, and made information retrieval effortless. I can pull up anything in under a second. The search capability is so fantastic that you don't really need to use tags or any other form of organization unless you really want to. (On my personal Evernote, I don't bother organizing anything-- it all just goes into the main notebook. On our work Evernote, we've got things in various notebooks, some shared and some not.)
The way Evernote desktop works is that it stores a copy of everything in the database on your hard drive, and also in the cloud. You can have the same database on multiple desktops/laptops. The phone version only retrieves the files you view. The cloud/web version is accessible via a browser.
NOTE: I would not choose Evernote as my main image storage tool, only a text document tool.

2) Google Photos (free)
When I was on a family trip to Belfast recently, I was given a huge box of photos to scan. Since I only had a day to do it, and couldn't bring them back to the US, I ended up using my phone as a scanner, and letting all the photos sync from my phone up to Google Photos in the cloud. This way, I was able to share the photos with everyone in the family right away, and have an online back up at the same time. The cool thing about Google Photos is that it can recognize objects in the images (!!), so if you do a search for "lighthouse" for example, it will find all photos with a lighthouse. It also does facial recognition. And it's easy to make albums, collages, slideshows, etc. and share them with anyone. It's a really fantastic app.

I have tried out Devonthink on my Mac (I'm mainly using a Surface Pro now, so mac-only programs aren't an option)-- it is a good program and lots of people swear by it, but I think it's more limiting than Evernote. It requires more organization on your part and its lack of sync makes it not as useful for me. I wouldn't use Devonthink as a photo storage tool, but as a document/note storage tool.

[dchang0]

Fujitsu ScanSnap 1300i

You can get this on Amazon or any office supply store.

Scans both sides at once.

I've supported several of these at work. They break fairly early (get clogged with dust, the light burns out, or the USB port goes bad). Calling Fujitsu for tech support or repairs when they went bad was an exercise in frustration.

As a result, we've switched to Canon DR-C125 and DR-C225 scanners. Not that they're a whole lot better, but they have lasted longer so far.

Nowadays I recommend sending the stuff off to a scanning service. There are a few aimed at the home market that are pretty affordable.

[turnleftbrighteyes]

@Amy I've grown to hate Evernote with a passion and recently deleted it from all my devices in a huff, as I couldn't get even a simple recipe search to work without headaches. Devonthink has also vastly improved its sync capabilities (there was a substantial improvement last week) and the mobile app, Devonthink To Go, is now solid as a rock, and I sync across two laptops and my iPad without worry. (There was a frankly bad mobile app a few years ago. That was totally scrapped.)

I'm an art historian and find Devonthink to be way more powerful and useful in organizing images for work and research.

In other words, for anyone out there irritated with Evernote, try Devonthink, as they appeal to very different approaches. And if you're happy with Evernote, keep on keeping on.