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Officially I hate clutter and I like 'clean lines'. Unofficially I have a problem
collecting stuff. And until fairly recently I had difficulty throwing away anything.
Of course we all keep bits and pieces. Some of which is naff but has sentimental
connections (see the ornament of two kissing bunnies near top right in this photo...).
However, I'm someone who has kept just about every magazine he has ever bought...
My job as a writer gave me the perfect excuse for holding on to this stuff, on
the grounds that some day I might need to look up some snippet of information.
But, over the last five years, I've changed and so has my line of work. Besides,
if I need to do any research, the Internet now puts information at my fingertips.
Do I really need magazines that I haven't looked at since 1988? Or ten-year-old
telephone directories? I don't think so... And now part of me can't wait to get
rid of this stuff.
I'm also looking at ways to cut down on the piles of papers that are connected
with running my business. I've begun scanning all incoming paperwork and storing
it on CD. It's still necessary to keep the original paper documents for legal
reasons. But now they just go into a box instead of a file. Date order by default.
And, ten years from now, that box can be disposed at a stroke.
A bi-tone scan of an A4 letter saved as a TIFF image is just 50k in size. Which
means a standard CD can hold around 13,000 pages. Imagine having every letter
you've ever received on one disc! Marvellous. But scary too, which is why you
need to have several back-ups...
But it also means no more bundles of papers to carry between here and Manchester...
Yippee!
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