Should I keep paper or scan everything?

The all-or-nothing framing is what makes this difficult. A small number of documents genuinely have to exist on paper, and once those are separated out the rest of the decision is easy.

Safety

Step by step

1. Separate out the documents that must stay original.Wills, property deeds, birth, marriage and death certificates, decrees, share certificates, and documents executed as deeds. A scan of these is not a substitute and some institutions will only accept the original.
2. Keep originals of anything you may need to prove.Vehicle documents, extended warranties and guarantees that specify original proof, and some insurance and legal correspondence. Check whether a copy is acceptable before disposing of anything.
3. Scan everything else.Bills, statements, receipts, correspondence, manuals, insurance schedules, tax records. Searchable, backed up, and takes no space. This is the large majority of household paper.
4. Scan with OCR so it is searchable.A PDF with text recognition means you can find a document by its contents rather than by remembering where you filed it. Most phone scanning apps do this now and it is the whole advantage of digital.
5. Use a phone scanning app rather than photographs.It squares up, crops, converts to greyscale and produces a readable PDF. A photograph of a page is far worse and much larger.
6. Adopt a naming convention and stick to it.Date first in year-month-day form, then what it is, then who it is from — so files sort chronologically and search predictably. This matters more than the folder structure.
7. Keep the folder structure shallow.A handful of top-level folders — house, money, vehicles, health, work, insurance. Deep nesting is what makes digital filing collapse, and search does most of the work anyway.
8. Back it up in more than one place.A cloud service plus a local copy, or two cloud services. A single copy on one computer is worse than paper, because it can vanish entirely and silently.
9. Protect the sensitive scans properly.Identity and financial documents in an encrypted folder or an account with two-factor authentication. Not in an open cloud folder and not emailed to yourself.
10. Keep a small paper file that anyone could find.Originals, plus a single sheet listing what exists and where. If someone else needed to deal with your affairs, a digital archive they cannot access is no use at all.
11. Tell someone where things are.Where the paper file is, and how the digital one can be reached. This is the part that matters most and is almost always left undone.
12. Check retention periods before shredding.Tax records generally need keeping for several years and longer if self-employed. Guarantees last as long as the cover. Check before disposing of anything with a retention requirement.
13. Shred, do not bin.Anything with a name, address, account number, date of birth or signature. A cross-cut shredder, or take a bag to a shredding service.
14. Set aside an hour to catch up, then keep pace.Scan the backlog once, then scan as things arrive. The catching-up is the hard part and it only has to happen once.
15. Go paperless with the senders too.Most banks, utilities and insurers offer digital statements. It stops the paper arriving, which is more effective than processing it faster — but download and file them, because access ends when you close an account.

Tips

• Date-first file names in year-month-day form. Everything sorts chronologically and searching works predictably.
• Download digital statements rather than relying on the provider's portal. Access disappears when you switch supplier or close an account.
• Write one sheet saying what exists and where, and put it with the paper file. It is the most valuable page in the house.

Common mistakes

• Shredding originals of legal documents after scanning — Wills, deeds and certificates have legal weight as originals and a scan is not accepted in their place. Keep those on paper regardless of how well organised the digital file is.
• Keeping the only digital copy on one computer — It can be lost entirely and silently to a failed drive, theft or ransomware. Digital records need at least two copies in different places.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask