Wanting to get rid of paper in your life is easy. Following through with that promise to yourself is hard.
I’ve been mostly paperless for close to 15 years, and the trick to it for me was to think about it the same way I think about taking care of my teeth.
Staying organized is a kind of hygiene. It’s almost never a one-and-done clean-up job. So think about dental hygiene. We learn to brush our teeth twice a day, floss once a day, and see a dentist every six months to catch problems before they get worse. However, if you don’t follow that schedule precisely, you can still have good dental hygiene. You just have to do enough. If you do almost everything you’re supposed to, but you miss two days of flossing or are a few months late scheduling your next cleaning, your teeth won’t suddenly fall out.
With hygiene (or any kind of maintenance), you don’t have to be perfect; you just have to be good enough.
Going paperless is very much like that. Here, I want to share with you the plan I used to remove most paper from my life. It should help you get started, but know in advance that you don’t have to stick to it exactly every moment of every day. You can mess up. You can forget. So long as you get into the habit most of the time, you’ll find yourself mostly paperless in a couple of months.
9 Steps for Going Paperless
Decide where to keep digitized papers. A natural choice is to save them in a cloud storage service, such as Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc. By saving them in a cloud storage service, you always have a backup. If you save files locally to your device, you could lose them all if your device is destroyed, lost, or stolen.
Create an inbox. An inbox is nothing more than a folder where you will save newly scanned papers by default. If you are highly organized, you might have specific folders where you want to sort each paper you scan. That’s great. But where will the files go when you’re feeling lazy or strapped for time? By creating an inbox, you have a catch-all place where scanned files remain until you’re able to sort them.
Pick a scanning app, and don’t overthink it. At this point in time, the majority of scanning apps are all perfectly suitable for digitizing paper. (Scanning photos is another story and requires a specialized app or a scanner.) If your cloud storage service has a mobile app, chances are the app has a built-in scanner. Use that. For example, the one included in the Dropbox app works great. It turns your phone’s camera into a scanner, with auto focus, auto edge-detection, cropping tools, and everything else you’d want in a basic scanner.
Scan only new papers. Every time you receive a new piece of paper that you can scan, do it right away. Get into the habit of doing this. Ignore any backlog you have for now.
Name your file. As you scan a new paper, rename the file. If you need help, use this formula: YEAR_description_detail (the underscores are optional). Let’s say I received a letter from the IRS in September 2025 related to my 2024 taxes. When I scan it, I will change the file name to 2025_IRS letter_2024 taxes.PDF. If you have more than one letter from the IRS that year, add a two-digit month to the beginning of the file name, for example: 2025 09_IRS letter_2024 taxes.PDF, where 09 means September.
Sort the file or save it to the inbox. Do you have an extra 15 seconds? If yes, immediately sort the file into a folder where you can find it easily later. If not, save it to the default inbox you created in step 2.
For papers you must keep, write “Scanned” and the date. Sometimes we have to keep physical papers in addition to having a scanned copy. When that happens, write “Scanned” on the top of the paper and add the date so when you see the paper again, you know you already scanned it. If it’s an official paper that you can’t write on, a sticky note will do. Store papers you must keep in a folder, accordion binder, or filing cabinet.
Shred, compost, or recycle. For all papers you don’t need to keep, get rid of them quickly, whether by shredding, composting, or recycling.
When ready, tackle the backlog, but not all at once. The very last step that you should do only after you get into the habit of scanning new papers, is to start digitizing your backlog. Begin with the most important documents. You should have digitized copies of titles and deeds, mortgage paperwork, the last seven years (to play it safe) of your tax returns, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and so forth. Don’t do it all at once! Focus on the most important papers first. I like doing this type of chore on New Year’s Day, when it’s quiet and I’m motivated to be more organized.
If you think about going paperless as like brushing your teeth, you can give yourself grace and leeway in those moments when you don’t follow through perfectly. It’s totally OK. As long as you do it most of the time, you’re in great shape.
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