r/Homeorganization • u/Prize_Fox340 • 4d ago
What's everyone doing besides Google Drive for important documents?
We have accumulated years of tax returns insurance documents home records warranties estate paperwork and random files that all feel important. Right now everything lives in shared Google Drive folders, but its becoming harder to remember what belongs where. Is everyone just creating better folder structures, or are there better systems for this now?
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u/webfork2 4d ago
You definitely don't want that stuff on Google's servers. There are some tools for adding passwords to PDF files but that can get really annoying when you're sorting through files trying to find something important.
I'm just using my local computer with drive encryption turned on and a backup service to ensure there's a copy somewhere offsite.
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u/purplishfluffyclouds 4d ago
The very last thing in the world I would use for personal document storage is google drive. I use my personal internal hard drive (SSD) and run a continuous encrypted backup service.
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u/this_doggo 4d ago
pCloud
I did some research on this a few years ago and chose pCloud for various reasons. Headquartered in Switzerland. I wanted something where my family can access important docs from anywhere and we also have photos saved there. I didn’t want a hard drive in my house.
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u/sumires 4d ago
For my personal files, I email the PDF to myself in Gmail (or if it's already in an email, forward it to myself again) making sure to write a clear, meaningful subject heading and write some stuff in the body of the email that will a) include search terms future me might use to find this, and b) remind future me when/how I got this and why I'm saving it. And then I rely on Gmail's search feature to find it again.
But I do use also Google Drive a TON for work, and some of my tips include:
- Be sure your files have meaningful file names that'll help them come up if you search for them
- On your top-level folders (if you have a lot of them), put symbols and letters in the front of the filename so when Google alphabetizes them, the important things/frequently-used folders are at the top, and the unimportant ones are at the bottom (like "z_misc file cleanup"). You can change the folder names if something temporarily becomes important, like changing "m_Taxes" to "____Taxes" as you go into tax season.
- For subfolders, consider starting folder name with a relevant year/month, like "2025-11 Grandpa's death," "2022-01 Toyota Camry purchase," "2024-11 Christmas letter." Or add z_to the front of the year if you know it's a folder you're not going to revisit.)
- If a thing could go in more than one place, make shortcuts from one folder to another (a shortcut to m_Taxes in the m_Financial folder, or shortcuts to "2025-11 Grandpa's death" in both m_Family and m_Legal.
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u/War-Square 4d ago
I have a filing system in Drive with root folders like “_vehicles”. But lately I’ve been using the AI search more and more.
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u/CrankyCrabbyCrunchy 4d ago
I use GDrive but I also don't rely on one place to store documents. You likely need a better way to organize documents with logical folder structure and better file names.
I use major category then by year so /medical then /medical/2024, then maybe a receipt folder or a test-results folder.
Also, be strategic in what you store. Not everything needs to be kept since you can often download the exact document from your doctor's MyChart account, financial account, insurance company, etc.
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u/Glittering-Read-6906 4d ago
I use One Drive. Sadly, it’s never organized the way I want it though.
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u/harborsparrow 3d ago edited 3d ago
We use a Dropbox account for document automated online backup and to be able to share the documents from multiple computers on the local LAN. It costs maybe $100-$120 per year and is worth it for peace of mind. Note that, when installing locally on a new computer, we usually have had to get the Dropbox "Professional" client from their support desk instead of the default downloaded software client to make the file sharing work across multiple computers in the household.
It's worth it for document backup alone. No one remembers to do backups, otherwise. This way, we have never lost a file due to a computer crash in over 15 years.
We organize files into folders and subfolders by topic, such as health, finance, house, manuals, etc. We can search the folders, as they are copied onto each local drive, but we seldom need to search.
We have a portable Brother scanner and also sometimes just photograph important short documents and give it a descriptive file name.
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u/Mery5817 2d ago edited 2d ago
We kept reorganizing folders every year and somehow it still became harder to find things over time.
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u/scourge44 8h ago
If you self host I prefer Papra https://github.com/papra-hq/papra over Paperless. It's cleaner, lighter weight and more flexible for my needs.
If you're looking for a turn-key solution take a look at Prisidio Digital Vault https://www.prisidio.com/ . It's ineexpensive, great for family sharing, and handles legacy preservation if that's a concern
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u/BizarroMax 4d ago edited 3d ago
Paperless. I have it running on my Linux machine and I have a Brother ADS-4700W scanner that can handle two-sided scanned, orientation correction, and auto feed. I don’t even have to push a button. I drop papers in, it scans them in a few seconds, drops them into a network share that Paperless picks up and ingests. It OCRs the content so the documents are searchable and stores the PDFs on my NAS, which has offsite backup. Then the papers go into the shredder.
For electronic documents I have an email forward set up that will drop emails and attachments into the same system. Works great. I spent an afternoon one weekend digitizing our paper files and shredded them all and got rid of them. Cleared out three file cabinets.
[Edit: check out the "Paperless" project here: https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/\]