After reading this post about Scrapbook Firefox extension, I just remembered that I wanted to talk a bit more about that.
I pay all my bills online. When the payment gets confirmed, it shows a confirmation screen that I should print for my records. Well, rather than printing to paper – print to PDF. Create a few folders for each company, date the receipt filenames accordingly, then burn to CDR (whatever method you prefer). Luckily I haven’t really needed any past bills, so after 7 years, it’ll be simpler to purge and destroy a CD rather than shredding a bunch of paper.
Let’s say you have five bills. Five pages per month turns out to 60 a year. That’ll be five smaller file folders you’d have to deal with. If your bills can go paperless, that’s even better.