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!
