Before moving aboard we converted as many of our things as possible to digital format. We knew there would be no space on a boat for years of paperwork and stacks of music CDs.

We had originally planned on not keeping anything that wouldn’t fit on the boat but there were just some things we couldn’t part with so we bought a small cargo trailer that is being stored with family. When we moved from Portland to San Diego, where Camille was waiting for us, it made the big move rather painless.

UPDATE: When we sold Camille it was easy to remove all of our belongings from the boat into the cargo trailer. A year later we bought another boat in Washington and simply towed the cargo trailer back up north to unload everything into the new boat!Banking and bills
Banks make it easy to pay your bills and receive statements online but they still like to send lots of junk mail. I had to call them directly to turn off the ads for credit cards and those pesky checks they want you to use.
So we don’t have to log into our banks through questionable internet connections we use mint.com to check balances and transactions. Be sure to read all about how we save money and make this lifestyle possible.

Past paperwork
We went through all our old files. And there was a whole file cabinet full! Most of the contents were shredded and tossed but some things we scanned/photographed to keep for records. The only thing we kept paper records of are past tax documents. I don’t think we have to but paranoia got the better of us.

CDs
I took our stacks of music CDs and painstakingly copied them onto a hard drive. It took days and days. Then we took all the CDs to the goodwill.

Photos
I had several boxes full of photos. I sent them to Foto Bridge to get scanned and then destroyed the originals. It was not easy to do but I’m glad I did it. I had moved with those boxes many times and never once looked at the photos. Just the other day I was able to use a scanned photo taken in Cabo 24 years earlier in a blog post. I keep copies of all of our photos on two computers and two external hard drives. And I don’t delete the cameras’ memory cards until I have at least one additional backup.

Be sure to read another post about going digital in which I highlight our handy iPad!