Throw your Very Important Papers

We've always had a stack of letters lie around on some kitchen table, because they seemed too important to throw. After a while the stack threatened to tip over or an important visitor came. So the whole stack goes from kitchen table into the study. After a year I need to do the income tax declaration and find six stacks of "Very Important Papers" in the study. That's when I start to postpone the tax declaration. These stacks mess up your desk and you can't find anything anyway.

Trash TV is living proof that most VIPs aren't that important, actually. The same holds for supposedly very important paperwork.

After years of frustration, last night I've thrown a whole bin full of supposedly important papers – such a relief! As we're moving around the globe once again – this time to Thailand – I can't afford to carry around a huge set of folders with receipts, salary slips, insurance notifications and electricity bills just in case I might need them for the income tax declaration.

To be honest: I scanned most of the papers before they went to the bin. And I gave useful file names to the resulting PDFs like: salary-slips-January-to-May2015-university-Georg-tax.pdf
What is left is one folder with certificates and degrees and one (tiny) folder with important papers. Whenever I need all my salary slips, I'll search ONE folder where all the PDFs reside for "salary" AND "Georg".

I'd like to thank Joachim Schlosser for his blog post on how to achieve an almost paperless private office. His German blog post is highly recommended:
https://www.schlosser.info/buero-papierlos-scanner-scanscap/

The second best description I found in English is here:
https://www.techlicious.com/tip/how-to-go-paperless-at-home/
However Kristy Holch suggests to have digital folders, so you'll have to decide where to put salary-slips-January-to-May2015-university-Georg-tax.pdf … Into the TAX folder or UNIVERSITY or SALARY or GEORG or …

I prefer searchable file names :-)