When personal computers were first introduced to the world in the early 80's, they changed the way we work, with unparalleled benefits compared to the type writer and telephone. There is however one promise that was never delivered upon. "Computers will reduce the amount of paper and perhaps eliminate paper all together one day".

A couple of months ago I was in line at OfficeMax purchasing yet another box of file folders and it dawned on me "This is ridiculous."  So I made a pre New Years resolution that day and purchased a Neat Scanner, and to compliment my new purchase a paper shredder. 

Neat is the name of the company that produces these great scanners.  Neat scanners come bundled with sophisticated software which OCRs your documents into a searchable database. OCR is an acronym for Optical Character Recognition which uses software to match the outlines of characters to determine the text on a document.  OCR software has been around for decades, but only now is it really fine tuned to be near 100 percent accurate as long as the paper you are scanning isn't ripped or damaged.

My realization of how great this was occurred to me just last week. I needed to track a computer receipt from 2 years ago. I simply typed in the name of the store in the Neat Software and presto it produced a list of all the receipts from this particular store in order by date in less then a minute.

Besides saving trees, and your sanity, there may also be health benefits with going

Neat Scanner

paperless. There have been reports that a hazardous chemical called 'Bisphenol A' can be found in credit card and debit receipts.  Scientists have found high traces of this in paper money because people keep these receipts in their wallets and it rubs against money which circulates throughout the world.

You should still hold on to official documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates and signed original legal documents, so I wouldn't recommend scanning and shredding everything; but this may be a good start to a paperless house, office and world.

Remember to always backup your computer on a regular basis, especially if you decide to go "Paperless"