OPTED Magazine

It occurred to me that almost everything that I read can be read digitally.  Then I realized just how much space, money and time I would save by doing so!  This culminated in some reasearch and ideas about why reading content digitally would declutter and streamline my life, and a conclusion that in two particular situations reading in a digital format just won’t cut it.

Books

The introduction of the Amazon Kindle has changed the concept of what it means to read a book.  Now your favorite books can be read on one device, downloaded in less than a minute, and contained in a much smaller space than shelves packed with rows of books.  That idea alone boggles my mind: the clutter of my enormous book collection could be drastically reduced to my favorite hardcovers and at least 4 bookcases worth of novels donated to a good cause!

And with the Amazon Kindle price just reduced on Amazon, it’s an attractive option that could save me money many times over…

Magazines

I pretty quickly decided that bookmarking a list of blogs and magazines anywhere — in a notebook, in a browser or Evernote — was not an efficient way to keep on top of all the sites I wanted to read.  The clutter throughout my online information management system was huge.  Activating my Google Reader to capture the RSS feeds of all my favorite sites was the best decision I ever made.  All my favorite content is stored there, is searchable for later, sortable by tags and source — I can’t express enough what an important step that was.

Now, some of you may be rolling your eyes that I should have known the technology existed, that’s so basic, blah, blah, blah.  But I bring this up because it’s part of the bigger picture about thinking of textual content I absorb and how it can be consolidated into as few applications or systems as possible.

Many of the magazines I read also have their articles available on the web in RSS feeds or newsletter format.  But when I considered magazine content flooding into Google Reader, I also explored receiving my print magazines digitally as well.  It turns out, many of my magazines offer the option of sending you the publication in PDF format.  Who knew?

Other reading material delivered to my house

While it’s not the most exciting reading material, bills and catalogs clutter up my mailbox and fill my recycling bin each week and it screams for a solution.  I don’t really need my Crate and Barrel catalog to be delivered seasonally — I can read and browse online.  It’s nice to see bills in my mailbox and they served as a physical reminder to pay things on time, but now the free email reminders that bills are available serve the same purpose without the clutter.

Same thing with newspapers.  My local newspaper has the same content online each morning and throughout the day, so why deal with the hassle of stacks of weekly newspapers that need to be recycled each week?

The conclusion of my research

After setting up a digital system for almost all of my reading content, I fought a 100% digital system.  I found there were two things I couldn’t give up in a physical, paper system.

First, was my favorite magazine, Real Simple.  I love having the ability to head to the pool with my favorite magazine and printing a PDF or lugging a laptop to a water scene was not going to work for me.  And I decided that my love for magazine clipping collages and a pool experience preventing me from going 100% digital with my magazines.

Second, was the weekend newspaper delivery.  Eliminating a weekly newspaper was a huge step, 5 out of 7 days is a big improvement.  But I couldn’t go without the weekend ads, the coupons (for my budget) and the Sunday crossword.  I had good reasons and felt that the substantial reduction in paper clutter each week could be rewarded with some money saving benefits to retaining a paper reading source!

Have you made any big changes in the amount of paper clutter that enters your home?  What were your strategies and what compromises did you make?  Share in the comments!

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