Before moving aboard we converted as many of our things as possible to digital format. We knew there would be no space on a boat for years of paperwork and stacks of music CDs. We had originally planned on not keeping anything that wouldn't fit on the boat but there were just some things we couldn't part with so we bought a small cargo trailer that is being stored with family (Thanks R & D!).
Banking and bills
Banks make it easy to pay your bills and receive statements online but they still like to send lots of junk mail. I had to call them directly to turn off the ads for credit cards and those pesky checks they want you to use.
So we don't have to log into our banks through questionable internet connections we use mint.com to check balances and transactions.
Past paperwork
We went through all our old files. And there was a whole file cabinet full! Most of the contents were shredded and tossed but some things we scanned to keep for records. The only thing we kept paper records of are past tax documents. I don't think we have to but paranoia got the better of us.
CDs
I took our stacks of music CDs and painstakingly copied them onto a hard drive. It took days and days. Then we took all the CDs to the goodwill.
Photos
I had several boxes full of photos. I sent them to Foto Bridge to get scanned and then destroyed the originals. It was not easy to do but I'm glad I did it. I had moved with those boxes many times and never once looked at the photos. Just the other day I was able to use a scanned photo taken in Cabo 24 years earlier in a blog post. I keep copies of all of our photos on two computers and two external harddrives. And I don't delete the cameras' memory cards until I have at least one backup.
Stay tuned for another post about going digital in which I highlight our handy iPad!
Hi Verena and Mike,
ReplyDeleteThank you sooo much for posts like these ones. For soon-to-be cruisers like us(2 months to go!), this type of information is so valuable! We're anxiously awaiting your next post to see what we're forgetting! :)
Katie and Mark
www.ControlledJibe.com
Glad I found your blog (through SundownerSailsAgain). This is a timely post as I'm just researching getting all our photos onto digitalized. Glad to know you are glad you did it. I've been hesitating because I know I'll need to throw out the hard copies, and that's going to be difficult at first. You make a compelling case to 'go for it'!
ReplyDeleteWay to go, I did this years ago, and now I am having problems finding stuff, but that is me, I am not a sailor, so I have more space to loose things. As far a hard copies go, we take our best pictures and make a coffee-table book, there are plenty of websites to do this.
ReplyDeleteThanks Verena & Michael, have a great time.