I had the pleasure of speaking with Justin Klosky, expert organizer and owner of the OCD Experience—that is, Organize & Create Discipline. We talked about digitizing your paper files and photos to remove paper clutter from your life and preserve the things that are actually important for the future.
 
Now, I consider myself to be a fairly "with it" person—I have a MacBook and an iPhone; I use Facebook and Twitter. I have a Kindle. I know HTML and CSS. I can use most electronics with ease. However, after I spoke with Justin I actually had a revelation: I'm not ready for the digital age.
 
What's ahead of us will probably look something like Back to The Future II—more touch screens all over the place, flexible paper, and just about everything will be digitized and centrally located on some sort of hard drive. That means many of the physical things we own will likely become relics. Obsolete. Maybe you are still thinking that this can't or won't possibly happen. But it probably will. And we need to be ready.
 
Justin told me that we need to prepare for the future even if we are unsure what it will look like. If not for us, we should do it for our children or our children's children. We need to preserve our family photos in a way that can be viewed, shared, downloaded, and preserved. I quickly realized that I had stacks and stacks or papers and other items surrounding me that could be quickly and easily digitized. I asked myself why I hadn't done that yet? My answer is two-fold: 1. It will take some real time to scan everything in, and I'm part lazy, part unenthusiastic, and 2. I am scared to throw things away.
 
How could I put that photo of me amongst Corinthian columns in Greece in the garbage? How can I feel comfortable letting go of my prom picture? My brother's graduation? I spent some time thinking about this and realized that I'm not throwing away the memories or even the images. I'm simply changing the way I look at them, or, their format.
 
Despite how technologically advanced you think you are, how many recipe cards, magazines with important articles, insurance policies, documents and papers, file folders, greeting cards, and other hard copies do you still keep (and maybe never look at)? Could there be a better way for you to organize your life using a digital system? Or, are you just not yet ready to part with paper?

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