9 years ago we proudly downsized our traditional lives into one small storage unit and a motorhome and then hit the road. Working remotely we classed ourselves as Digital Nomads, engaging in our passions from anywhere in Europe as long as we had Internet. Yet looking back there’s no doubt we were nomads, just not quite authentic DIGITAL nomads. Roll forward to 2024 and we are reassessing everything, from loved furniture, the squirrelled personal effects and the paper we have amassed. OMG so much paper. Finally with the ruthlessness of Sir Alan Sugar, now is the time to really put the digital into Digital Nomads.
A paperless society? Not on your Nelly
Now we can be forgiven, can’t we? We’d never done this travel, not living in a house thing before. We were entering a brand new world where living in a 7.5m tin can was a virgin experience. We thought we had worked out all the necessary components of life on the road with only the bare essentials. Our filing system was immaculately organised into two concertina cases stored safely in a lock-up. Original certificates had been photocopied and all the necessary 6 years of paperwork for the Government duly stored. Just one folder with the all important pages to run our lives.
Even 9 years ago the digital age was very much alive and kicking and so we thought we had most bases covered. Hard drives, laptops with documents in the Cloud, and photos of passports. We even asked the corporate organisations with whom we still had to interact, to send us either emails, newsletters or digital post. This way it cut down all the unnecessary marketing stuff that would fall through mum’s letter box. We were doing our bit for a paperless society. And yet, paper still seemed to flow like the falling of autumn leaves. Where does it all come from?
Autumn 2024 and being settled for a few weeks in Ross on Wye, we made a monumental decision to get rid of our collection of streamlined bits from our storage unit. The clearance project has begun in earnest. Tough decisions are helping us to let go of things that we really don’t need and paperwork is just one of them.
Cooking up a storm
One of the many things I have discovered as we root through our lock-up is an old folder full of mine and my mum’s favourite recipes, some of which date back 50 years. There’s no room in Scoobie for that, so I decided that rather than loose them, I would digitalise them. So I found myself an Adobe Scan App that converts documents and pictures into PDFs. Of course I could just take photos of them, although this app is really clever in finding the right margins of the recipes I want to scan, allowing me to edit, combine more than one picture into one PDF and save them as .JPG too. So it gives me so much flexibility and it is free to download.
So now I have myself a lovely Recipe collection, all in alphabetical order that I can refer to at any time. I suspect this will eventually be turned into an ebook somewhere along the line, although for now, I have myself a digital recipe folder ready to cook up a storm. I am loving this little app.
Digitalising our entire life
With the confidence of a gazelle, free from the jaws of a lion, I began tackling our Scoobie Important Info folder. With our payload weight at a premium, sifting out paper and digitalising it seems like the most important thing to do. So I reckon over the course of an hour I must have saved myself 1kg in paper that we have been carrying around unnecessarily.
Each document’s importance assessed then scanned and thrown away securely. Now I have lovely folders containing all our important documents, Scoobie’s history documented in invoices and habitation checks and personal documentation. Of course original documents for Birth and Marriage will stay somewhere safe, although we have copies digitally now. We will of course do a back up to a storage device in case I loose my phone, although for now, everything is safe and secure and streamlined.
Next is the filing case, so paper, you better watch out, this digital nomad is on fire. What digitalisation do you do for your travels or just to keep your lives as paperless as you can?
Great idea Karen.. as soon as I saw a comment of yours yesterday about recipes … I thought of my folder of favourites I carry in the motorhome..some are photocoies from books! We usually cook from scratch., So I thought I was being so clever not carrying cookbooks with me!! But this is a great idea .. just need a rainy day to do this .. said no one!! x
😆 Yes I hear ya. Just an hour a night whilst watching TV will nail it. kx
I use Tiny Scanner for invoices etc and whilst I still need to tackle a backlog, have found it incredibly useful. It too finds document edges and can store or share as pdf too
Brilliant, always good to have options. This morning to secure ours in case of phone loss, I can log into the online account, so I know everything is safe. x
Honestly Karen you inspire me to organise my paperwork. We have a lock up which l keep lots of important items and carry necessary ones in Frankie but there has to be an easier way and you’ve found it. Now need to make a start!
Hi Carole well that’s lovely to hear. It is a game changer for us. Of course there is still stuff we have to keep, wabt to keep in paper form, although the difference in weight and space is significant. x
What a great idea although it worries me if I need a document and can’t get wifi for some reason. I might do this but save to a storage drive.
Chris the beauty of this app is you don’t need WiFi to access it and you can, if need be simply download a jpeg to your gallery. So you have all bases covered. kx
I can see these Karen. I hadn’t actually clicked on the blog. I’m sorted now. Thanks for your reply.
Hey Anita, that’s fabulous. We’re in. 😉 x
Also love Adobe Scan. What a great way to keep all the old recipes!
It is a cracking little App. Check out Paprikaapp.com as it is more for recipes. kx
Hi Karen, great work 👏👏👏
Is there a significant difference to using Google docs (cloud based) and using your notes (iPhone) to scan docs?
Teach me, as that’s how I operate, if you think the app is better please tell me 👍 x
Hi Julianne, I’ll be honest, I don’t know either of these resources, so can’t judge which is best. All I can say is that this app stores a pdf which for important documents is better than .jpg I.e less corruptable and can be accessed via other devices through Adobe. So if my phone is stolen then the files are not lost. I hope that helps x