Do you ever get to thinking, “If only…”? Call us naive, but we often stray into the territory of daydreams and wishes. Just the other day we were wondering whether it would be possible to invent a calorie free mince pie. If only, right?
But actually that would come second on our wish list if we happened to stumble across a genie-filled lamp. The first thing would be a digital solution to the many storage challenges that plague humankind both at home and in the office. Yes, it’s a pretty niche wish but just think how great it would be to store these things online…
Teaspoons
Why is it that teaspoons are so darn elusive? Other utensils seem to have no trouble staying put in the cutlery drawer. Ok so they do occasionally take a short vacation into a neighbouring segment so that if you’re not paying enough attention you end up trying to sip your soup with a fork. But teaspoons just disappear, especially from office kitchens. Digital storage would allow you to password protect your spoon so Jason from Sales couldn’t add it to the growing collection in his desk drawer.
Christmas decorations
Oh don’t get us started on this one! For one month every year it’s become obligatory to deck ones halls – and offices and gardens and pretty much everything else – with 10 tonnes of glitter, tinsel and fake snow. Which we don’t really mind, in and of itself. No one could call us Scrooge. It’s the other 11 months of the year that cause the difficulty. Because Christmas decorations are bulky. They’re also usually quite delicate. Which means they need careful packing away – often with fiddly layers of tissue paper to stop the more fragile items from shattering – and take up a ridiculous amount of space. Definitely one of the things we wish we could store digitally.
Tupperware
[Disclaimer: other brands of kitchen plastic are available.] If you could store these boxes digitally we reckon you could probably get rid of half your kitchen units. You’d also be able to search by size or volume rather than having to take a wild guess at whether your leftover casserole would actually fit or not. And you could easily retrieve the corresponding lid without having to try on half a dozen “close but not quite” options first. Heaven, yes?
Socks
Talking of keeping pairs of things together, what about socks? It’s true that very little beats the satisfaction of a perfectly organised physical sock drawer; the rows of tightly rolled cotton all snuggled neatly next to each other (just us??). But realistically, how often is your sock drawer that tidy? Isn’t it more likely that it’s a shambles of odd socks that have less chance of being reunited with their partner than Kylie and Jason? A digital sock drawer would present none of these challenges.
Cables
Every single household and most offices we’ve visited have a box of random cables that 98% of people couldn’t identify if their lives depended on it. These assorted chargers, scart leads, HDMI cables and so on are undoubtedly important and therefore can’t be thrown out, even if it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to remember what they connect to. So how great would it be to store them online where they wouldn’t get in the way? Come to think of it, pretty much the entire contents of your average “man drawer” could be tidied up in this way. After all, how often do you really need the key to the back door of your old house, or a takeaway menu from an Indian restaurant in town that has almost certainly closed down since you got it?
At least we don’t need to worry about paper cluttering up our homes and offices any more, right? There’s just no excuse for having endless shelves of invoices, receipts, statements and reports cluttering up the place when getting it all transformed into a digital archive is a piece of cake (well, we say that – it’s actually a pretty involved process for us, but for you it’s as simple as saying, “Hey, can you sort this out please?”).
To find out more about how the Scan Film or Store team can help you make the switch to digital – or store those paper documents you still need in our purpose built, climate controlled, 24-7 monitored and alarmed storage unit in Bridgwater – get in touch for a no obligation chat today.
The paperless workplace movement has been around for a fair while now, and rightly so. After all, trees don’t grow on… erm… well, you know what we mean. It just isn’t sustainable to keep hacking down forests so we can scribble a short note on an A4 piece of paper and then toss it in the bin when we’re through with it. The environment will eventually go off in a huff and we’ll be left to try and survive an eternal winter eating nothing but foraged mushrooms or something equally unpleasant.
Sometimes it feels like, despite the fact that we’re living in a so-called digital world, we are surrounded by really quite stupid amounts of paper. Receipts, invoices, records of all shapes and sizes, forms, statements – you get the picture.
No one ever expected the Spanish Inquisition, or so they said. Which is silly really, since the Spanish Inquisition were clearly renowned for popping up out of nowhere and causing mayhem. They may not be around today but there are plenty of other dangers to watch out for if you’re in business today, and in this week’s post we thought we’d work through just a few – and add some ideas about what to do to ensure you don’t face them. Because the best way to deal with disaster is to avoid it. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Choosing a document storage company isn’t a particularly glamorous process. Not like picking out your next sports car or deciding on where to go on a family holiday. But it does require a degree of thought because, let’s face it, boring as it may be to some (not us, obviously) it’s an important decision to get right.
It seems only fair to point out from the get go that we are not bookkeeping experts. But we have worked with plenty of bookkeepers in our time, not to mention business owners, so we’ve picked up a few things along the way.
Size – it’s a big thing in the media these days. But in this case we’re not talking waistlines. Oh no, we’re far more interested in paper sizing. And as far as we’re concerned, the bigger the better! Because oversized document scanning is one of those things that is more complex than it might sound, and you know we love a challenge.
If you’ve never come across
Ah the summer. A joyous time, full of sunshine and happiness and ice cream cones and laughing children. Or not, as the case may be. Call us old codgers if you will but we can’t help but see the potential disadvantages of this supposedly splendid season – the lurking disasters that threaten to strike at any time without warning.
There’s no doubt that the human race doesn’t have an especially good track record when it comes to taking care of this planet we call home. We use too much electricity and water, cut down too many trees, cause too much pollution – it’s not on, really.
