In October 2012, Tyla and I bought an Epson GT-S50 document scanner. We debated for quite a while about it since it was pricey, but more than two years later, I’m still loving this device. Sure, there are plenty of other ways to scan in your documents, but if you’re going to do it a lot, this is the way to go. It scans the pages ridiculously quickly, handles multiple pages with ease, scans both sides in a single pass, and in the end it creates a searchable PDF file.
The best part of all this is that when I’m done scanning the papers, they go in the shredder. And because it’s so easy, there’s no debate about whether something is worth keeping or not. Everything gets scanned and shredded. We’ve scanned over 3600 documents! That means 3600 pieces of paper* that didn’t end up in a filing cabinet somewhere in our house. And that is my favorite feature.
* This number includes scanning in a bunch of older documents that were previously in a filing cabinet as well as some stacks of photos.