this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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If it's digital, I'm keeping it. A scan it's just a few kilobytes. And for a normal private person, the storage amount needed is absolutely minimal. Even if you get one important document per mail per day and scan it with a 1MB filesize, you're looking at 365MB per year. If you're 20 right now and are looking at a life expectancy of 85, that would be 365MB*65 = 23GB of storage.
You are right. Backup and storage of scans should be not a big deal.
But the paper documents:
Some things like birth and education certificates need to be kept indefinitely. Some documents like receipts need to be kept for a while. Some documents can be discarded after scan and some are PDFs entirely.
I. E. How can I tell from the scan if there is a paper document and where is it stored?
Or How do I age out paper which is not needed any more?
In my case I've taken the really important stuff like birth certificates, etc., and put them into its own folder. Everything else is going into a simple box. I'm not getting that many documents by snail mail. It's actually quite easy to find the physical document: I know from the scam that I've received the document on first of June two thousand eighteen. So I can go back to two thousand eighteen June and then there are maybe two or three documents which I've received in that time frame. You can also simply write an ongoing number on the document.
And how do I tell from the scan if there is a paper document? My scanner is naming those PDF in a typical method. If it is called Receipt_000123.pdf, I know that it is coming from my scanner and that there is something physical
I'm not aging out papers. I'm still on the first box, so everything is okay storage wise.
Ist ne Idee. Nicht überkomplizieren. Nummerieren. Scannen. Wichtiges abheften. Anderes chronologisch in eine Kiste.