The modern world has produced a plethora of gadgets to make our lives easier—and one of the greatest is the computer in all its incarnations. With a cell phone, a laptop, and perhaps an external hard drive, one can do all manner of things that otherwise require paper, which takes up a fair amount of space in one’s home. Thus, if you want to regain some elbow room, go paperless.
Ideally, we’d all take tech classes as needed so we can use email, buy e-books, manage finances electronically, and store documents and notes-to-self on a gadget or in free “cloud” storage services. Most sites take great pain to keep information secure, and this will save you a great deal of shelf and cabinet space.
In reality, buying e-books of every physical book a person owns can be economically prohibitive, and not everyone’s eyes feel comfortable reading from a screen—though the basic Kindle or Kindle Paperwhite were created to fix this problem. Furthermore, while a single Kindle or Nook can store hundreds of books, one can’t scan or flip through a reference work very efficiently. Also, not all utilities and companies offer online billing, and people can forget passwords or accidentally delete important information. (In counter-argument, we can also loose or launder paper documents, so it doesn’t seem like that much more of a risk to me.)
Musicians also don’t yet have a good way to store and play off of electronic sheet music, so they’d still need to keep their music books. (Though wouldn’t it be cool if a pianist could set a large iPad before him and tap the screen to turn pages forward and back—or better yet, a program that could hear what you played and turn pages for the musician!? A single device could store thousands of sheet music PDFs!)
The solution, as always, is to compromise. Whenever you wish to make a new purchases of fiction, get the e-book version. When you have the money, buy e-book versions of your physical fiction books, and then sell the physical copies. However, keep your reference books and perhaps certain pieces of classic literature with lots of footnotes, which often have poor navigation in digital formats. Similarly, read newspapers and magazines online if possible, or recycle old papers and mags after reading them (or after you realize you won’t get around to reading them). If you tear out and save stories you particularly liked, they’ll take up far less space in a folder than the entire periodical will.
Definitely get on your bank’s and other place’s billing websites and set up direct deposit and automatic payments. This, as an added bonus, ensures you’ll never get a late fee!
Example
When I got my Kindle, I acquired free editions of many classic works so I could ditch redundant volumes from our shelves. (We gained one shelf back—but since the books were double shelved, it doesn’t seem like it.) I’ve not bought a physical fiction book since then except for other people. However, I’ve found that poetry is often poorly formatted on the Kindle, and footnotes aren’t always linked well to the text. (For example, The Canterbury Tales was nearly unreadable, but I didn’t own it in hard copy before, and it was free, so it was no loss to me; I could have returned the book if it had been a problem.). I’ve kept my physical dictionaries, my Bibles, and mom’s notated copy of Shakespeare’s plays since I like the notes and my ability to flip through them quickly. I recycle what mail and most other papers we don't need. Unfortunately, I’m a great note-taker and a poor note take-carer, so I have piles of notes I need to go through and possibly input in the computer. At least they’re neat piles so far... I whittle them down about once a year when a fit of organization comes upon me.
Anyway, you get the picture. Good luck!
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