Mercury is retrograde (11/24 - 12/15/11) and want a great time to clean up old projects and clutter! I am planning on doing a major purge of my stuff before storing the remainder, selling, freecycling, gifting or trashing/recycling. Also planning on scanning my photos and paperwork. If anyone has any experience with any of this going digital proejcts let me know your experience!
I have found a good photo scanning place (www.scanyourentirelife.com 1000 photos for $64).
On business records I think they are required for 7 years. I have about 30 boxes in my basement (you may recall them from the last Yule party covered in pagan sheets!) If I scan them then I (and my VA) can access the records online when needed. I have been looking at www.shoeboxed.com which charges about 15c per document (not page) and also integrates with www.evernote.com which I use all the time for storing notes, webclippings, useful emails and even photos of handwritten notes - all of which are searchable (yes even the handwriting is searchable!). I am also looking at www.officedrop.com which also integrates with Evernote - they charge by the page scanned 6-12c each or less for volume over 5 boxes.
On books I will photograph the titles on the spines in the bookshelf and load into Evernote so it is easy to know what I have and where it is. Books I don't want to read again can then be sold to a used book store or for valuable ones on Amazon which makes is very easy to sell books.
I am also looking at a CD ripping service www.ripstyles.com to convert my CD collection (about 1000 CDs) to MP3 and load onto an iPod for me. That way no CDs to carry around my world travels.
My view is that the less stuff I have the more free I am. I can always buy or borrow stuff in the future if the need comes. 80/20 rule. I have been inspired in my travels by Tim Ferris of the 4 Hour Work Week and Tynan world nomad www.tynan.com - both of who sold/gave away most of their stuff before traveling. My goal is to only travels with a few things, most of which I could replaced easily if they were lost.
