Simplifying Our Life- Media & Online

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In this post I'd like to focus on what we've done to simplify the media in our life and general computer stuff.  While what we're doing may not appeal to everyone, we're really loving how things are going and I hope that this inspires or helps someone out there.  Basically, we've gone digital with just about everything, or are working our way towards going completely digital.

MEDIA

Books- As I said in my last post, we decided to take the plunge and buy Kindles.  It's something that I've been thinking about ever since they came out, but up until a few months ago, I didn't think that a Kindle could possibly be as good as an actual book.  Turns out that it's not as good as a book.  It's much better!  My only regret now is that I wish we would have gotten them much sooner.  We will not be buying actual paper books anymore, only e-books.   This has many benefits-

1.  It saves on resources.  Besides the actual paper, energy and materials used to make a book, there's also the energy used to haul books to stores or to have them sent to you if you purchase them online.  Then there's the gas and time you use to drive to the store or library to get books (if you don't have them delivered, that is).

2.  It's cheaper.  E-books cost quite a bit less than purchasing new books and Amazon offers all of the classics, as well as many others, for free.  You can also log into your local library and check out their e-books. 

3.  It saves on space.  We can store up to 1400 books on our Kindles and an unlimited amount of them in our cloud.  That's a ton of space and leaves us with a lot less to dust!  The cloud also serves as a back up source for our books, which gives us peace of mind.   

4.  We can sync to our computers and iPhones (when we get them in a few months, that is), so that we can read our books anywhere, whether we have our Kindles with us or not.

5.  It's much easier to carry & hold.  At 6.5" x 4.5" and weighing a mere 6 ounces, it's a breeze to carry in my purse and hold while reading.  One of the books I'm currently reading is over 1000 pages and I definitely prefer holding my Kindle to read it!  They'll also be nice to take on our road trips, which will save on space and having to lug several guide books in & out of the places we stay.   

Cookbooks- Over the last few years, we've gone from having somewhere around 50 to 60 of them to 5.  Even with those five, our plan is to go through them and eventually get rid of them.  Right now, I have every recipe that we kept out of every cookbook printed out and kept in a folder, but I'll be making documents for each one and putting them on our Kindles.  Depending on how that works, we may still be keeping the printed versions of them in the folder, so we'll see.

Magazines- I recently switched from the print version of the three subscriptions I had to the digital version or cancelled them all together.  You can also get magazines on Kindles or other devices like iPhones, but not every magazine has that option yet.

CD's- We have several hundred cd's that we'll be bringing to a shop that purchases used ones.  Whatever they don't buy will be donated.  From now on, all of our music will be purchased through iTunes and to back it all up, we use the iTunes Match, which puts everything in our cloud.  It's a great thing because we can sync to any computer and Apple device.  Plus, if something happens to our computer, we have it all backed up in our cloud.   

Movies & Video Games- We've never purchased movies, but until our local Blockbuster shut down, we always drove to the store to rent them.  Now we go through Blockbuster online for both movies and video games (I don't play them but Mike loves his PS3).   We may be switching to something like On Demand in the future, depending on costs and availability. 

Photos- There are about seven photo albums of non-digital photos that we have which we never look at.  Our Flickr albums, though, we look at a lot, so I'm going to be either scanning all of our non-digital photos or going through a scanning service to have them made into digital versions.  Flickr also serves as a back up source for our photos, just in case we lose them on our computer.  I like that you can organize them so much more than a physical album, too, by putting them in sets, collections and adding tags to them.   

MISCELLANEOUS STUFF  

Backing Up Files- As I said above, backing up our media is important and we have things in place for that.  I don't have many documents, but the ones I do have I back up with Dropbox.  It's easy and if you don't have a ton to back up, it's also free. 

Social Sites- I've cut down on the sites that I frequent and am just sticking to the few that I can really get into.  I'm mostly active with blogging (of course!) and Flickr, but I also use Goodreads to keep track of the books I read and have a Facebook page (but I don't use my personal profile anymore, ever).  Besides those, I put our videos on my Facebook page (as well as Flickr, if I can get them to upload there).  Everything else, I no longer spend time on because I just don't find them worth my time.

Finances- We've gone paperless with all of our bills and bank statements.  That's really cut down tremendously on paper, checks, stamps and time.  It's also great to see up to date information on our accounts rather than waiting for a paper statement.

Does anyone have any tips to add?  I'd love to hear them!