Simple Tip #5

See this pile. It's big, it's old (think decades), it's ugly and I have no idea what's in it. Amazingly, it could've been worse. I could have kept the magazines in their entirety instead of clipping out articles. So actually it's a very small pile.

The pile has been living next to my bed. Very restful.



See this, this is our scanner. It's already reduced the irreplaceable slides taken by my FIL to little O's and 1's on our hard drive. Slides that resided in fifteen zillion carrousels for a slide projector that no longer worked. Carrousels that somehow ended up at our house, living in and decorating my front room. Now the slides are all neatly cataloged and copied onto DVD's and given to the rest of the family.

One set of slides took the two of us an entire evening to extract, scan, record and name, and replace. It. Was. Endless.

But it was worth it in the end because the entire family now has easy access to photos of a brand-new house (which is now 55 years old) and itty-bitty trees (that had to be cut down before they fell on the house) and little kids and their friends (who are now retired and take cruises) and lots of Sierra backpacking trips (some things never change).

Even better, my visitors no longer have to sneak looks at the boxes of slides stuck in a corner and wonder what kind of new decorating trend I've stumbled upon. But enough about slides, because this tip is really about my pile which is about to disappear.

I just push the little blue scan button down there on the right and then throw the scanner article AWAY. Amazing.



Better yet, I get to read through my bloglist of friends, crafters, and dog lovers with no guilt while the scanner chugs away. So far I've thrown away over fifty pages. And I'll go through later and arrange the scans into Recipes, Crafts, Gardening, Remodelling, Travel, Holidays, etc.

Now can anyone tell me why I would have kept a recipe for Squid Boat Salad? Using squid mantles? (I kid you not.)