Your paper mountian
 

Word to the wise. Do keep everything on computer. What paper copies you have file them right away.. I have accumulated a large paper mountian. it consists of patterns from fab shop hops, free ones online, bills ,research stuff etc So now I have 16 boxes to go through. I did save some to my computer but it died with lots of stuff lost. So , its great to save to your computer but make a paper copy or save on memory stick external drive etc. if not you may end up like me with only part of patterns etc. Perhaps have a paper binder or folder. Right now I am still digging through the papers and also trying to see if I can draft the missing block from photos etc. Takes a lot of time and frustration. sure would have been worth the extra time at the start.

Good advice. :)

What pattern are you looking for, maybe someone can help.

Sounds like it would be easier to start over and do it right this time, especially if most of yours were freebies. If you had purchased others on line, try asking if they would let you download the pattern again as you had lost yours in a computer crash. You probably don't even have to know the name. Just ask them to send all that they have sold to your account.

I've done the same thing :( Boxes and boxes, bags and bags...

And who wants to spend quilting time going through all our boxes of papers :(

Get "Carbonite". (Google it) It is a secure online encrypted website that backs up your contents of your computer. So when, not if, your computer crashes, you can retrieve all your stuff. It works great and is relatively inexpensive. $55 per year, I believe. It has saved my butt a couple of times. I am not affiliated with this company at all, I just believe in it.

I scan all my patterns and keep them online. There are many online storage sites that will give you up to 5gb free storage. I pay for internet so I let the internet store my stuff. I seldom print out patterns from online, I click print and then select where to send them, mostly to an online storage. I can access them from any computer and print them when needed. When going to a workshop I send the scanned pattern to my Kindle Fire. No more lost paper patterns. There is a free program I use called cute pdf. It converts any print out to a pdf file. As for mail, it is taken care of the day it comes. All bills get written out and put in envelops ready to mail when it's due. Junk mail gets thrown out the same day it comes. I learned to not let any mail sit for later. It makes a cluttered mess fast.

Can Bellaboo just lend some of her organizational genes to me. No, make that give them to me.

After all my notebooks became overstuffed I bought a plastic hanging file crate.
Lots of room and well organized now.
I dont trust electronics for storage and the crate is easy to use.
Bellaboo, you are so tech savey. I have a Kindle Fire but dont know how to use all the stuff on it.

I save the freebees from the web on my computer. I have a free pdf converter program that will make web pages into pdfs. It works as another "printer" option. I just preview the the printing, decide which pages I want and the hit the print button (the pdf converter program is listed as a printer option) and it converts the pages into one pdf. I then save it into different folders. I like the idea of off-line storage in case the disk fails or the computer crashes for some other reason.