Decluttering - Paper

In preparation for living between two homes full-time, I’ve had to start decluttering and working out how to live more nomadically. The last thing I want to do is be carrying too much stuff from one house to the next or missing a bill.

The first thing I want to concentrate on is paper. Although I doubt I’d have a paperless lifestyle, if I’m going to live in two houses, I’ll need to:

1. Eliminate paper coming into the letterbox when I’m not there especially bills being delivered to the wrong house and
2. Reduce the amount of paper I’m carrying between homes.

The first thing I’ve done is tackle the amount of paper coming through the letterbox. I’ve:

• put a “no junk mail” on the letterbox advertising. 
• returned to sender to companies to stop them sending unwanted mail. 
• had bank statements made available digitally.
• asked utility and phone companies to email bills instead of posting meaning I can see the bills when I’m travelling. Most bills are now electronic anyway.

To reduce the amount of paper I’m carrying between homes I’ve:

• put any much loved recipes from my cookbooks into the notes section of my ipad and pretty much donated the rest. I kept a few I love.
• made the decision to no longer own a printer once I run out of the toner for my current one given I google drive most things now. This saves me the cost of a new printer, the cost of toners and the cost of printer paper. And I won’t need to transport a printer between two homes.
• eliminated paper maps. I’ll use a satnav and google maps instead. 
• found all paint colour swatches I wanted to keep on the web and transferred them to pinterest. 
• continued to go through all my family history paperwork and transfer information to my blog or my ancestry database. 
• had my kids stop sending Christmas cards to friends - they Skyped or FaceTimed them instead. 
• purchased no magazines, no new books, no gift bags.  My book collection has been donated to charity, save a few that I can’t find online. If I want a new book I use ebooks or use our local library. Local libraries rock. Old magazines went to a childcare centre. Travel books went to a backpackers.
• transferred my Excel spreadsheets to google sheets
• transferred my Word documents to google docs.
• scanned any hardcopy photos and put on google photos.
• stopped buying Christmas paper. I’ll use up what I have left. This should take years.
• binned old birthday and Christmas cards.
• shredded old paper bills and paper receipts and started asking for receipts to be emailed to me where possible.
• binned manuals. Most manuals can now be found on the internet.
• digitised all warranties and put in google photos.
• reduced the amount of Christmas cards I send out. I zoom instead.
• thrown out any takeaway menus. Everything is on the web these days.
• sent any kids stickers I’ve found to a neighbour’s child.
• taken photos of kid’s artwork and loaded on Google photos
• shredded tax statements that are past 7 years although it’s done online now so there is hardly anything
• scanned old concert tickets I want to keep the memory of
• scanned my resume certificates to Google photos
• thrown out old diaries once I’d transferred necessary information to the current year.
• transferred names and addresses on paper or business cards into Contacts on Apple devices.
• kept paperwork I have to like marriage certificate, birth certificates, will etc in one folder that is easy to carry.

This has left me with hardly any paper to transfer between homes. A few books, a few cookbooks, some old travel diaries, a folder of necessary paperwork like birth certificates etc and a few notebooks. That’s about it.

What am I missing?