![Photo courtesy of Kevin Cortopassi [Flickr]](http://www.thepracticalnerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/3189844381_951c9059ac.jpg "Photo courtesy of Kevin Cortopassi [Flickr]")
I remember the first scanner my family bought back in the early-to-mid-’90s. It was a little handheld thing that you slid across the picture yourself, and generally resulted in wavy, blurry pictures that looked terrible. Yeah, we didn’t use it much.
Flash to today: scanners are built into printers and the total package can cost around $50 or less, depending on where you get them. I have one, and I have seen multiple uses for it that have given me more than my money’s worth ($60 at the time of purchase). And before you tell me you have no use for one of these things, here’s a handful of reasons to get your hands on one:
1. Get rid of that filing cabinet/lockbox.
Okay, so you should still hang onto it for original copies of stuff that you need (i.e., birth certificates, etc.), but for bills that you need to hang on to, or random paperwork, it’s time to start scanning these things.
"What happens if my computer goes down and I lose everything?" Well, that’s why you pair it up with a good, free backup solution and you can let your house burn down to the ground, and you’ll still have copies of all your important paperwork. Plus, searching through your paperwork becomes infinitely easier. Ever sat in your file folder sifting through papers to try and find one little piece of information? Now you can have a bird’s-eye-view of all your paperwork at one glance, which save you a lot of time!
[Plus, if you keep a free Evernote account, you can make it even more searchable, and you can tag your documents, cutting that search time to mere seconds!]
2. Replace the fax machine/snail mail and start sending documents via email.
Yeah, we all do it, but what about when you need to sign something? You can do what I do and keep a Photoshop version of your signature, or you can print out the document, sign it, and scan it right back in as a PDF. Then you can move the PDF file to your backed-up folder where it belongs and attach it to an email. Done and done.
I’ve used this one to replace the long snail mail process for student loan documents and other important forms. Just ask the representative or whoever if there’s an email address you can send the form to. Most are just fine with that.
3. Preserve your memories.
A year ago, I took it upon myself to undertake a huge project: digitizing my parents’ family pictures. They, like many families, had a huge box full of pictures that were never put into albums. Any time we wanted to look at them, it was this giant deal where we lugged the box upstairs and had to empty it out on the kitchen table or the living room floor. It took hours and it was a mess.
After researching different photo services, I settled on (not surprisingly) Google Picasa. While Flickr is a very popular photo sharing site, I felt that Picasa was more geared towards the average user and not the photo enthusiast. At the time, Picasa also was the one that had face recognition, so I could tag people in a picture quickly and easily.
Using Picasa, I was able to categorize photos into albums based on decade, tag the people in them, and then tag them with categories ("wedding", "baptism", "school picture", etc.). Now, someone who knows the family and wants to look at our pictures can go to my Picasa page and view pictures based on what decade, what activity, or grouped by the person in the picture. That’s pretty sweet. I captioned each picture with whatever was written on the back of the photo. Oh, and this is all free.
Why would I want to do that? We preserve our memories on one of the most perishable of materials: paper. If there’s a fire, your memories are gone. If you keep them in the basement and the basement floods, your cherished photos are ruined. Heck, even just letting a few years pass can deteriorate the pictures – especially old Polaroids!
Scanning them in gives them a higher-quality preservation. Plus, you can back them up easily in a number of ways. The archives of photos that I put together for my parents are on my hard drive, backed up with my Syncplicity account, in my Google Picasa account, and on a DVD that I gave them. That’s 4 different backups. Bring on the floods.
4. Expense tracking.
Here’s a quick and easy one: do you save receipts for any reason? Scan them and drop them in a folder on your hard drive or in your Evernote account. Then you can throw away those annoying little pieces of paper.
So there you go, four great reasons to invest in a scanner. It beats down on clutter and gives you the chance to protect and preserve anything important that’s on a piece of paper. What do you use your scanner for? Share with us in the comments below!
Tom is an entrepreneur and freelance writer, working out of his apartment full-time, or wherever he feels like taking his laptop. He doesn't take long European vacations or blogs on the beach. He's an Average Joe that took control of his life. He wants you to do the same.
