On digital organisation a few points:- - never put them where the operating system or program wants to put them. Pick names and known directories on a different drive or partition to the boot operating system. I have seen OS updates destroy the system files directories and they are hard to recover. Backup of personal documents, photographs and video is easier if all in one place separately to programs. You need a structure that makes sense and can grow. I keep letters in one folder, accounts in another. Life Insurance and pensions and other insurance separately. Bank statements and utility bills separately. Receipts when I have bought an item I hold in box files at least for as long as the warranty. With some under 3 and 5 years and repairs starting at 12 months could save a lot of hassle. Even when the seller closed doors the manufacturer paid for the call out and parts. Good for them and for having the original papers as prove. - have more than one back up. I have had whole web sites disappear after their systems failed. I hold the "original" but recovery took hours. Many friends have had hard drive and mobile phones fail and all the photographs lost. Some might be recoverable but the costs are very high. - scan important documents at least at 300 dpi. This is usually enough even for photographs (the normal 4x6 inch, 5x7, 8x10 etc). Some images created can produce a herring bone effect. Scan at 600 dpi and use software to reduce the size. Negatives and slide scan to the highest native resolution (or use a good digital camera with macro and well lit back light). I scan these uncompressed (not JPEG which is lossy) , edit some and then convert to JPEG/PNG. - if just needed for reference for end of year accounts then 150 dpi is enough. - naming or renaming documents with original dates (date photograph taken, or date letter was sent or on the bill) with a short description helps searching for it later. Documents can be turned into readable PDFs but that is more work than needed. Metadata can be added to some files but a good description can be enough. I rename all photographs taken with any mobile phone or digital camera by date on the time stamp of the file. If I edit the image the name does not change but the time stamp may. Many cameras use the same naming system and as each device is at a different stage you get duplicate names. I use a free program to rename to my format all photographs by date and then number. It is rare for this to create a duplicate name across several cameras in use. - digital files can get corrupted. There is an effect where bit rot to the magnetic surface can damage a file. It this is an image it might be unable to recover the image from that point on. If this is found the back up might be similarly affected. A work around is not leaving any file on the same bit of hard drive for too long. Copying to a new position makes sure the copy is okay along the way. I don't use back up systems. They are great for the OS and business. My personal data is a mirror copy. I can copy that to a new drive even if one drive (original or backups completely fail) and not find that the new OS doesn't understand the old back up systems when the boot drive crashed and you have "nothing". Recovery is possible, could be expensive. - Other than paper (or clay tablets) most media breaks down and become unreadable after a short period of time. Try to find a working 8" floppy disk or even a 3.5" HD floppy drive. Even a system with a working CD drive these days is rare. Most CDs/DVDs only last a few years. Archive media is very expensive but machines to read any back from are less common. Same with early memory cards. The shoe box of old photographs last over 120 years; the digital files from 5 years ago might have already been lost. The CDs I used for a training system in 1988 were unreadable by any drive I could find in 1993. I also worked on Laservision 12" optical discs and not many working players around now. Technology changes and there are limits on being backward compatible.
I am completing my Ph.D.so my struggle area is academic papers and journals for my dissertation. I have dozens and dozens of primary sources that are taking over my office (and dining room). I have the PDFs of each article, but it is easier to have the paper copy when you are writing a 250 page document.
I just did a major paper declutter yesterday and wow i must say how must useless clutter paper makes. It took a lot a lot of space with just stupid papers pilled and stored . I shredded them all(except magazines) and then recycles it . What a relief and i can breathe now 😂
I watched your 27 ways to responsibly recycles and dispose items but i was curious what and how goes into your home’s recycling bin. I try to tell everyone i know that every single item they put in their recycling bin that they should always rinse out their items before recycling
I have a Trust instead of just a simple will. There is a law that states there must be a paper trail of financial statements for trusts so although I have tried to go paperless, they still send paper statements. Stupid rule but I can deal with it. But I must say, I have SO MUCH LESS paper in my life now with the actions you outlined- switching to online billing and being rigorous about thinning and purging. I'm down to just a couple of file drawers- What a relief! And to answer your question- "stacked briefly".
Wow... I am currently sorting my mountains of paper. Yesterday I searched for "paper" on your channel... without result. There it is:))) Charlie is an angel:)
Wow. Thank you very much. I watched a lot of videos about this topic already. I loved yours. It brought some new insights, things i did not know/thought about before. Thank you very much 🙏🏻❤️
I'm still in the process of decluttering years worth of papers. Some things are digital, but some things I still feel more comfortable keeping paper versions. I'm getting there. It's a slow process 🙂 I had the free 15GB of Google Drive storage for years, but then last year, I had to upgrade to the 100GB version for a fee. I think all of my phone photos are automatically backed up to my Drive, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Do you know if there's a way to store them without them using up so much of my drive?
I don't digitize what doesn't come in digitized, but I've gotten away from a lot of stuff coming in physical form. I am not totally great with how the digital stuff is organized, but I have been getting the physical stuff whittled down to less coming in, and less to store.
Papers, documents, receipts, letters, cards mount up but these days not as much as you might think. I store my correspondence in 35 litre Really Useful boxes. My current box was started January 2011. It contain all my letters, documents, bill, cards other than "junk" mail which has largely stopped over that period. I have seven more 35 litre boxes going back to 1970 a time without e-mail and my friends from college days (17-19) were at university all over the country and the only communications was by letter. Although this is rather pointless and seems yet another source of clutter it is amazing for the memory and I have in effective the collective memory of my friends from 50 years ago able to pick out the letter that they wrote and I had written back a life time ago. Some organisations demand original documents. Share corticates and when those shares got moved around. Lawyers who insist on everything in print and originals not copies and accountants who have only started to accept scanned documents and computer accounts in recent years. Insurance policies and pension plans would seem not to be needed. They have the records going back 70 years but not always. They have fires, floods and computer failures and if you have the original documents it smooths the way forward when dealing with money that is yours and held by them. I even had to check my payroll papers from 1988 to confirm the information 30 years later. In the electronic age the number of times I have had to resent e-mails, documents and get them to read what I have instructed or requested seems to grow. I am my colleague where both asked for our 16+ exam corticates in English and Mathematics with her having a degree in English and me in Mathematics. Originals only! I don't recall any employer, even previous teaching jobs needing to see anything more than my degree and teaching registration (then not accessible on line - they are now going back hundreds of years). Original birth certificate and passport. I had my solicitor, who was my parents solicitor going back to 1965 ask for my passport and seeing it out of date ask me to get an up to date passport. So I asked him to sign the papers and my current photograph to say he has known me for three years so I could apply for a new passport for his prove that I am who I say I am! We would think that all manuals of products are online and that we don't need them. They are not, even recent items can fail. The radio controlled clocks I purchased in the last five years normally don't have instructions (movement parts for making clock or replacing old ones) as the web page listing had the instructions. I have copies of those and so can look up which of the variations of resetting it when you need a new battery or it fails to get the summer time clock change. When selling, or giving away instructions may need to go with them. It is always nicer to have the item in original box with all the original cables and papers. If broken beyond repair dig the papers and box out and dump them too. I have an attic. It helps to store those boxes. In some homes this isn't possible. It still might not be sensible. But that is another story. As a collector and curator I look for mint in box items to photograph and write up; scanning all the documents so I am biased. For most paper work having a scanned or pdf version is enough. Don't even need huge amounts of storage. Since 1993 most of my correspondence has been by e-mail, particularly work related. Even with reading and approving documents and reports this is under a few gigabytes. All the photographs I have taken over the passed 30 years is below 1 terabyte. Home movies on the other hand can be large. The raw transfer of an old camcorder tape is 14Gb (can be edited and compressed, but start with the best transfer). New 4K home movies are huge files. Another story.
Mine are simply stacked 😆 I still have a filing cabinet that contains all the office items, and I’ve kept original documents from my vehicle, current insurance plans, AA degree, all loan paid in full notices & 21’ medical receipts (cash out the HSA when I retire). I tend to comb through every year, and replace documents when the new ones come in. I didn’t know about a password website, I just use notes on my phone 😬 Thanks for an informative video! I would definitely be interested in photo organization!
This is gold!!! I have a box that I throw all my paper in, it started to overflow. Now I’m so overwhelmed and tried to organize it twice, but it’s so much. I’m going to follow your advice and report back 🤞💕
:) I have for years worked on the overflow method. The incoming papers stack up. There is a bin below. What ends up in that bin when full goes to the big bin in the garden and then every 3 to 6 months does to recycling. I have had to recover papers from that more than once :( Important items (bills to be paid, policies (like car insurance) notice of appointments etc) are handled quickly and then filed in a known place. The cuttings from magazines, notes, scribblings to be done when ever don't have a place and if I don't get around to them are cleared out - eventually. It is when the stack goes from a foot to a metre that I know I have a problem. Those were the days.
Let me know in the comments- are your papers simple or stacked?!
They are now finally simple and space saver without any paper clutter
You and your dog together warmed my heart today. Thank you for the great information!
You are so kind, thank you :)
On digital organisation a few points:-
- never put them where the operating system or program wants to put them. Pick names and known directories on a different drive or partition to the boot operating system. I have seen OS updates destroy the system files directories and they are hard to recover. Backup of personal documents, photographs and video is easier if all in one place separately to programs. You need a structure that makes sense and can grow. I keep letters in one folder, accounts in another. Life Insurance and pensions and other insurance separately. Bank statements and utility bills separately. Receipts when I have bought an item I hold in box files at least for as long as the warranty. With some under 3 and 5 years and repairs starting at 12 months could save a lot of hassle. Even when the seller closed doors the manufacturer paid for the call out and parts. Good for them and for having the original papers as prove.
- have more than one back up. I have had whole web sites disappear after their systems failed. I hold the "original" but recovery took hours. Many friends have had hard drive and mobile phones fail and all the photographs lost. Some might be recoverable but the costs are very high.
- scan important documents at least at 300 dpi. This is usually enough even for photographs (the normal 4x6 inch, 5x7, 8x10 etc). Some images created can produce a herring bone effect. Scan at 600 dpi and use software to reduce the size. Negatives and slide scan to the highest native resolution (or use a good digital camera with macro and well lit back light). I scan these uncompressed (not JPEG which is lossy) , edit some and then convert to JPEG/PNG.
- if just needed for reference for end of year accounts then 150 dpi is enough.
- naming or renaming documents with original dates (date photograph taken, or date letter was sent or on the bill) with a short description helps searching for it later. Documents can be turned into readable PDFs but that is more work than needed. Metadata can be added to some files but a good description can be enough. I rename all photographs taken with any mobile phone or digital camera by date on the time stamp of the file. If I edit the image the name does not change but the time stamp may. Many cameras use the same naming system and as each device is at a different stage you get duplicate names. I use a free program to rename to my format all photographs by date and then number. It is rare for this to create a duplicate name across several cameras in use.
- digital files can get corrupted. There is an effect where bit rot to the magnetic surface can damage a file. It this is an image it might be unable to recover the image from that point on. If this is found the back up might be similarly affected. A work around is not leaving any file on the same bit of hard drive for too long. Copying to a new position makes sure the copy is okay along the way. I don't use back up systems. They are great for the OS and business. My personal data is a mirror copy. I can copy that to a new drive even if one drive (original or backups completely fail) and not find that the new OS doesn't understand the old back up systems when the boot drive crashed and you have "nothing". Recovery is possible, could be expensive.
- Other than paper (or clay tablets) most media breaks down and become unreadable after a short period of time. Try to find a working 8" floppy disk or even a 3.5" HD floppy drive. Even a system with a working CD drive these days is rare. Most CDs/DVDs only last a few years. Archive media is very expensive but machines to read any back from are less common. Same with early memory cards. The shoe box of old photographs last over 120 years; the digital files from 5 years ago might have already been lost. The CDs I used for a training system in 1988 were unreadable by any drive I could find in 1993. I also worked on Laservision 12" optical discs and not many working players around now. Technology changes and there are limits on being backward compatible.
I love the info in this video, but my favourite part is definitely your dog lol so precious!
Thank you!! 😊 Her name is Charlie and she's a cuddle monkey :)
I am completing my Ph.D.so my struggle area is academic papers and journals for my dissertation. I have dozens and dozens of primary sources that are taking over my office (and dining room). I have the PDFs of each article, but it is easier to have the paper copy when you are writing a 250 page document.
I just did a major paper declutter yesterday and wow i must say how must useless clutter paper makes. It took a lot a lot of space with just stupid papers pilled and stored . I shredded them all(except magazines) and then recycles it . What a relief and i can breathe now 😂
Thanks,great video.This helps in meeting one of my goals.
Glad it was helpful!
@@MiaDanielle Thank you for your help
I watched your 27 ways to responsibly recycles and dispose items but i was curious what and how goes into your home’s recycling bin. I try to tell everyone i know that every single item they put in their recycling bin that they should always rinse out their items before recycling
I have a Trust instead of just a simple will. There is a law that states there must be a paper trail of financial statements for trusts so although I have tried to go paperless, they still send paper statements. Stupid rule but I can deal with it.
But I must say, I have SO MUCH LESS paper in my life now with the actions you outlined- switching to online billing and being rigorous about thinning and purging. I'm down to just a couple of file drawers- What a relief!
And to answer your question- "stacked briefly".
That friend is a keeper.
Wow... I am currently sorting my mountains of paper. Yesterday I searched for "paper" on your channel... without result. There it is:))) Charlie is an angel:)
Wonderful! Perfect timing :D
This is VERY helpful. Thank you.
Wow. Thank you very much. I watched a lot of videos about this topic already. I loved yours. It brought some new insights, things i did not know/thought about before. Thank you very much 🙏🏻❤️
You're very welcome! 🙂
Yes. Photos decluttering please
I like the idea of a notebook/folder in case one has to leave the home for an emergency.
going paperless has helped reduce the majority of my papers. for all important documents i keep in an accordion file folder. p.s love the pup!
Thanks for sharing! (and thanks for your puppy love :)
Terrific video and your dog is adorable
Thank you!
Thank you so much for this very informative video!
I’m not tech savvy (at all) so I appreciate the way you explained~ kept it simple😊
I'm still in the process of decluttering years worth of papers. Some things are digital, but some things I still feel more comfortable keeping paper versions. I'm getting there. It's a slow process 🙂 I had the free 15GB of Google Drive storage for years, but then last year, I had to upgrade to the 100GB version for a fee. I think all of my phone photos are automatically backed up to my Drive, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Do you know if there's a way to store them without them using up so much of my drive?
I don't digitize what doesn't come in digitized, but I've gotten away from a lot of stuff coming in physical form. I am not totally great with how the digital stuff is organized, but I have been getting the physical stuff whittled down to less coming in, and less to store.
I'm glad you're finding something that works for you!
Beautiful clip ! ❤️❤️❤️ Very nice Vlog, Can You make clip.. Organisation, cleaning office desk - Declutter Paperwork in office, sortin, ripping...?
I would but I don't have any paperwork! What you see in the video is literally IT
Charlie!!! The most adorable co-star😍
Papers, documents, receipts, letters, cards mount up but these days not as much as you might think. I store my correspondence in 35 litre Really Useful boxes. My current box was started January 2011. It contain all my letters, documents, bill, cards other than "junk" mail which has largely stopped over that period. I have seven more 35 litre boxes going back to 1970 a time without e-mail and my friends from college days (17-19) were at university all over the country and the only communications was by letter. Although this is rather pointless and seems yet another source of clutter it is amazing for the memory and I have in effective the collective memory of my friends from 50 years ago able to pick out the letter that they wrote and I had written back a life time ago.
Some organisations demand original documents. Share corticates and when those shares got moved around. Lawyers who insist on everything in print and originals not copies and accountants who have only started to accept scanned documents and computer accounts in recent years. Insurance policies and pension plans would seem not to be needed. They have the records going back 70 years but not always. They have fires, floods and computer failures and if you have the original documents it smooths the way forward when dealing with money that is yours and held by them. I even had to check my payroll papers from 1988 to confirm the information 30 years later. In the electronic age the number of times I have had to resent e-mails, documents and get them to read what I have instructed or requested seems to grow. I am my colleague where both asked for our 16+ exam corticates in English and Mathematics with her having a degree in English and me in Mathematics. Originals only! I don't recall any employer, even previous teaching jobs needing to see anything more than my degree and teaching registration (then not accessible on line - they are now going back hundreds of years). Original birth certificate and passport. I had my solicitor, who was my parents solicitor going back to 1965 ask for my passport and seeing it out of date ask me to get an up to date passport. So I asked him to sign the papers and my current photograph to say he has known me for three years so I could apply for a new passport for his prove that I am who I say I am!
We would think that all manuals of products are online and that we don't need them. They are not, even recent items can fail. The radio controlled clocks I purchased in the last five years normally don't have instructions (movement parts for making clock or replacing old ones) as the web page listing had the instructions. I have copies of those and so can look up which of the variations of resetting it when you need a new battery or it fails to get the summer time clock change. When selling, or giving away instructions may need to go with them. It is always nicer to have the item in original box with all the original cables and papers. If broken beyond repair dig the papers and box out and dump them too. I have an attic. It helps to store those boxes. In some homes this isn't possible. It still might not be sensible. But that is another story. As a collector and curator I look for mint in box items to photograph and write up; scanning all the documents so I am biased.
For most paper work having a scanned or pdf version is enough. Don't even need huge amounts of storage. Since 1993 most of my correspondence has been by e-mail, particularly work related. Even with reading and approving documents and reports this is under a few gigabytes. All the photographs I have taken over the passed 30 years is below 1 terabyte. Home movies on the other hand can be large. The raw transfer of an old camcorder tape is 14Gb (can be edited and compressed, but start with the best transfer). New 4K home movies are huge files. Another story.
Mine are simply stacked 😆 I still have a filing cabinet that contains all the office items, and I’ve kept original documents from my vehicle, current insurance plans, AA degree, all loan paid in full notices & 21’ medical receipts (cash out the HSA when I retire). I tend to comb through every year, and replace documents when the new ones come in. I didn’t know about a password website, I just use notes on my phone 😬 Thanks for an informative video! I would definitely be interested in photo organization!
Haha "simply stacked"! Love it 🤣
Short term pain for long term gain 💪🏻
Totally agree 🙌
Good content, something we all struggle with, too much paper. I'm interested in your take on organizing photos.
Nice, an extra video this week, yeah!
Glad you enjoyed it :)
This was a great video Mia!! Loved all the tips!
How to manage my digital clutter.
I just went through some papers and threw them away...yeahhhh...baby steps...okay I will do auto pay for the light bill...yeahhhh baby steps
This is gold!!! I have a box that I throw all my paper in, it started to overflow. Now I’m so overwhelmed and tried to organize it twice, but it’s so much. I’m going to follow your advice and report back 🤞💕
Glad it was helpful! I can't wait to see how it turns out for you!
:) I have for years worked on the overflow method. The incoming papers stack up. There is a bin below. What ends up in that bin when full goes to the big bin in the garden and then every 3 to 6 months does to recycling. I have had to recover papers from that more than once :(
Important items (bills to be paid, policies (like car insurance) notice of appointments etc) are handled quickly and then filed in a known place. The cuttings from magazines, notes, scribblings to be done when ever don't have a place and if I don't get around to them are cleared out - eventually. It is when the stack goes from a foot to a metre that I know I have a problem. Those were the days.
I put a label in my mailbox asking for no junk mail or fliers.
Did it work?
@@MiaDanielle sure did!!
If we go paperless 😢we take away jobs from people who are working so hard to support their families by delivering mail 😢
I don't think that's the case with the peak of online shopping ;)
I put my covid card in back of my passport.