Going paperless, manual edition

About 4 years ago I went online to find the manual to our ice cream maker as it had a recipe we wanted to try, and at the time we could not find it (that was before we used the filing cabinet and even were really organized). It took about 3 hours of searching, traversing various sites, before I found what I was looking for. The manufacturer’s site was of no help. Their site looked like it was made from geocities. With that in mind, I was hesitant to begin the phase of going paperless where you download or scan your manuals to get rid of the paper copies.

I’m happy to say things have improved dramatically in the last 4 years. The ice cream maker’s site? I found the manual in about 45 seconds. For most manufacturers even, you can now track down a manual for something you own to download and throw out the paper copy. It’s fantastic!

But there are still limits. Store brands are woefully under-represented. It is still possible to find such manuals online, but you have to go to sites that advertise themselves as manual repositories, and usually just contain links back to the manufacturer or store front who doesn’t have that manual available for download. Some of the sites do have manuals, but the download link is obscured around several dozen google ads they try to make you click by accident. I’m pretty sure that’s their business model.  They can be found, but it does take some hunting. Craftsmen and Husky proved particularly challenging.

Another limiter is that a lot of the manufacturers only provide manuals for products they are actively selling. A shop vac I bought from Ryobi is no longer offered and the manual cannot be found anywhere.

There are also time limits, even for larger companies that you wouldn’t think would be a problem. A Frigidaire refrigerator we bought in 2005 had an easy to find manual, but the chest freezer from 2001 could not be located. If you want to go paperless, start downloading manuals now! Just because you can find them now does not mean they’ll still be around when you need them.

It has been a good two weeks of getting rid of paper. I hope to snap a photo of everything that we’re putting out for recycling this Thursday.

The War on clutter, Part 2

A fantastic weekend! So much gone. Though so much remains. It’s astonishing how much of a mess is created by cleaning out all of the junk in your life. But to get rid of it, it must first be exposed.

We got rid of our filing cabinet.

The paperless effort has made progress over the course of the last year, but it can be hard to find the time and motivation to pull a file folder out of the drawer and proceed to scan and shred. So, last weekend, I realized that to get rid of the paper, we must first get rid of the container that holds it. Just like getting rid of the coffee table eliminated the junk that accumulated upon it.

Where there was a filing cabinet now sits several small stacks of file folders. But again, as with the coffee table, the room is now much bigger. Even with the floor littered with file folders, the room has grown in size. It’s not about increasing how much space you have, but rediscovering how much space is already there.

We also got rid of our old home stereo system, and will hopefully today be rid of a charcoal grill that came with the house and the second litter box we no longer use. Last week about 7 CD’s sold, and we went through our books to see what to donate, so the shelves are now more spacious.

The goal has become to move out of our house with less than we moved in with. This will be a challenge given that we’ve since had a kid, but I think it is possible. At the very least, we might be able to break even, which is still saying a lot.

So, yes, a fantastic weekend!

The War on Paper is now the War on Clutter

The war on paper is not over. The soldiers got temporarily re-deployed onto other projects to reduce home clutter in other ways, but they’re starting to trickle back and hitting the paper hard. The 2009 finances are done, as well as half of the car records. I’ve also started downloading pdf versions of some manuals.

We finally got rid of our 20 year old TV, and replaced it with something a little nicer. More importantly, we got rid of the old entertainment center. The thing was massive, and a magnet for odds and ends to accumulate upon. The newer one is much smaller. Less footprint = less mess. I swear, our living room doubled in sized once we got rid of that thing.

When we got the house, it ended up being a foreclosure auction, and some things of the previous owner were left behind, including a pretty sizeable collection of Blues and Jazz CD’s. We held onto them for a couple of years in case the previous owner ever came back looking for them, but have started to sell them off on Amazon. Listing on amazon is pretty easy, but it still takes a while to list over 300 CD’s, especially when you need to sample each one to make sure it works, given that they’ve been sitting in the attic for quite a while. Over half of them are gone now, which feels pretty good.

While getting rid of junk is important, Julie and I are trying  pretty hard to minimize how much we actually throw away. There are lots of recycling programs. The TV was donated

The war is not over, but neither is it lost!

On the Topic of Dreams

Julie asked me the other night if I thought the American Dream was  dead, and it got me thinking.

Do dreams really die? If so, where do they go? Is there a dream heaven or hell? Is there a dream purgatory? Is it possible to kill a dream? If so, should it be made illegal? After all, killing is wrong, so should you be able to charge someone with dreamicide? But what if the person dreams about killing other people or their dreams? Do you then kill the dream? Does that then kill the dreamer?

Dreams have been known to take on a life of their own, but does that make them killers? After all, where did they get that life? Was it stolen? Was it gifted? Was it leased!?!