Fast way to digitize/archive old documents?

[codegeass]

I'm about to clean up my storage room, things have been getting out of hand for a good while there. Order must be restored! I expect to simply get rid of most of the boxes, but I'm pretty sure we've thrown valuable stuff in there as well. Old family photos, documents we have to preserve due to regulation, high-school diplomas even... I intend to fish those out and move them to another room (or at least put them in sturdier boxes), but scanning them as well sounds like the right move here...

I have a scanner that my hubby keeps in the basement (a spare one from his office), and we can use it for this, so the question remains about which apps should I install to speed this out. I've heard of apps that can "identify" what type of a file the last scanned doc or image is, and then "send" the new scan to a folder I've previously set as a destination. (Hope I'm explaining this clearly...)

So, any recommendations about that type of software? and nothing too fancy please, I see this as a one-off thing, not a big "investment" opportunity :)

If you don't get responses here try putting it in the Housekeeping section as sorting paperwork is often talked about there.

(I don't have an answer but curious too!)

I think I see what you mean, and yeah, I totally relate to having "that" one room where the chaos just grows and grows... Some practical advise: I know you said you got a scanner, but there are mobile apps that can help with this (scan a doc as if you were taking a picture of it), and perhaps you can immediately transfer it to the cloud or G Drive? It might take you some time to train yourself to capture the images properly, but that method can be efficient as well. And as for apps that can work in conjunction with a scanner, I suppose most of the "regular" office apps will do just fine here. Ask your hubby what are they using at work, and just do some quick online research looking for a cheaper alternative for that software. If you can find something with a free trial, that alone should be enough, I don't imagine this would take you longer than a single weekend (but I might be wrong, of course)

Thanks for pitching in!
I did ask him and it was one of those "why didn't I think of that" reactions haha. I guess some of us can completely "wall off" our office lives from our private ones. So, it seems like a few of the apps they've been meddling with at work come with free trials (M-Files, FileCenter, NetDocuments...) and have that feature where the app spots what went in the latest scan (it's called OCR, I looked into it and it's kinda cool actually).
Plus, some of the guides related to these apps talk about the correct methods of archiving documents, and it seems like we'll need to make a retention schedule of sorts so that this doesn't happen again. They mention having a shredder as well, but that'll have to wait for the time being