Ask Slashdot: How Do You File Paper Documents At Home? 371
swamp boy writes "How do you file paper documents at home? I'm mostly asking about things like monthly paper-based statements that get mailed to you (credit cards, gas cards, medical bills, health insurance explanation of benefits, electricity bill, natural gas bill, water bill, etc.). Do you push to have as many sent electronically as possible? Do you scan the paper documents to store electronically and then shred the paper document? How do you manage and organize the ones stored electronically? I've been doing this the old-fashioned way with manila file folders, but as time goes by I keep thinking that I should opt for digital storage. What works for you?"
Re:Is digitising such a good idea? (Score:4, Funny)
Keeps me warm and annoys the neighbors!
Piles (Score:5, Funny)
Lots of them. All over the house. It's a mess.
Re:Geeky method (Score:5, Funny)
Better yet, use a binary tree. On each piece of paper, punch 1 hole at the top-center, and also a hole at both the left and right bottom corners. Tie a small length of string through the top hole, and then tie the other end of that string to the left-or-right hole of the appropriate parent paper, based on your key sorting criteria. Don't forget to rebalance the tree on occasion.
For added fun, use different colors of string for different search keys. This way you can end up with multiple binary trees, all sharing the same nodes!