Evernote and the Paperless Home Office

For many years I have been saving the user manuals that come with many of the products I purchase.  I have a file cabinet in the basement containing all of these manuals but these manuals are taking up some space.  Holding on to these manuals has been useful (how much oil does my lawn mower engine need?) but I don't refer to them frequently.  I decided that I no longer want to house this collection of paper in my basement.  So rather than throwing these out, I decided to move the manuals to my Evernote account.

I am able to add a PDF as a separate Evernote note for each manual.  The good news is that many of these manuals are published as a PDF on the manufacturer's website.  A simple Google search for "X user manual" (where X is the product I'm looking fore) allows me to quickly find the URL of the product manual.  I am slowing adding these manuals to my Evernnote account and recycling the paper copies once I add the PDF copy.

I found another benefit to moving these manuals to Evernote.  Not only do I save physical space in my basement, I am also able to view these manuals anywhere.  Since Evernote syncs with my iPad and iPhone I can search for these manuals on my devices as well as my computer.

I'm going to keep looking for ways to free up space by moving my paper copies to Evernote.