The Internet is an extremely powerful tool. One of its greatest benefits is that it can help you to reduce or eliminate paper clutter. Five things you can do to tame the paper dragon in your life using the Internet are: 1) Get Your News Online; 2) Participate in Online Banking and Financial Services; 3) Send Email 4) Look it Up Online; and 5) Get Your Catalogs and Do Your Shopping Online.

1.    Get Your News Online!

Do you have stacks of old newspapers and magazines sitting around the house? Consider canceling your subscriptions and retrieving your news online instead. Most major print newspapers, magazines, and professional journals today offer an online counterpart. For example, the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and People magazine, all have online versions.

Many newspapers and magazines streamline their web content, leaving out many of the stories found in their print versions. One way around this is to check out the web site of your local library. For example, my locallibrary offers full text articles of current and back issues of many popular magazines and trade journals, such as National Geographic and American Medical News.

In addition there are many periodicals published solely online with no print counterpart. For a comprehensive listing of online publications, see http://www.new-list.com.

2.    Participate in Online Banking and Finance

Most major banks, investment firms, and other financial institutions offer online services today. Services range from international bank transfers to online bill payment and from online stock orders to simply viewing account information online.

With online bill payment, you don’t have to write checks out anymore and save the cost of postage or a trip to the utility office too. When you initiate a payment, your bank or bill paying service sends the check to your creditor. In many cases, your bank or bill paying service can pay your vendors electronically, using a bank to bank transfer, which is much faster than sending a check in the mail, so you can hold on to your money a bit longer too.

In addition, many companies outside of the financial industry are offering financial services. For example, Sprint allows customers to receive their statements, pay, and view their account information online. BMW offers online banking at banking.bmwusa.com and the US Postal Service offers an online bill payment service, www.usps.com. Receiving your financial statements online also saves time and storage space, eliminating the need to physically file and store the documents.

Loans, insurance, and many of life’s other financial requirements generate a lot of paperwork. One way around this is to apply for these things online. In addition to saving time, you’ll probably save some money too because the overhead to offer these services online is much lower than the traditional face-to-face, paper intensive means.

3.    Send Email

Although there is something special about taking the time to put pencil to paper to write someone a letter in today’s busy world, save trees and the cost of postage by using email for quick, informal communication.


4.    Look it Up Online

Save bookshelf space by reducing your collection of reference books, and using the online versions of your favorite dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and almanacs instead. Your local library likely has subscriptions to certain reference sites requiring a fee, so you might even be able to save money too! Examples of online references sites include:
    

5.    Get Your Catalogs and Do Your Shopping Online

Get your name off junk/advertising mailing lists and stop getting inundated with catalogs at home. Most major department stores and specialty shops post their catalogs on the Web. For example, Sears at www.sears.com; JC Penney at www.jcpenney.com and Jcrew at www.jcrew.com.

After placing an order online, instead of printing your receipt, you can save it to disk, eliminating the paper receipt you would receive if you went to the vendor’s place of business. By paying with a credit card or electronic check online and also receiving your credit card and/or bank statements online, you’ll have a truly paperless transaction.


In this day of information overload, we’re all looking for ways to sort through an inordinate amount of data. In many cases information overload becomes paper overload. Use the Internet to send the paper dragon back to its cave!