Paperless office? Ha! How about a paperless life?

The invention of the PC was supposed to usher in the "paperless office," a completely digital workplace without paper memos, forms, files or records. But that vision was ruined by another invention -- the printer. Now offices have more paper than ever.

So you can forget about ever working in a paperless office. But what about a paperless life?

Just three years ago, achieving a completely paperless personal life was very difficult to do. But since then, a wide range of products and services has become available that makes it much easier and much better. I'm going to tell you about those in a minute.

As a kind of "lifestyle experiment," I've been trying to completely eliminate paper as a data storage medium for the past six months. I've gotten rid of most check-based bill paying, moved most of my reading to digital forms, nearly stopped paper mail from coming to my house, eliminated paper records and nearly purged all paper-based files. I've gotten into the habit of literally photographing anything with words on it that I might want to remember later, and uploading them on a service I'm going to tell you about.

I'm now ready to declare my experiment a success.

The biggest upside to going paperless is that finding information is more like a Google search and less like a scavenger hunt. But I'm also a lot more productive and waste a lot less time, and my life is a lot less cluttered.

Another benefit -- also hard to quantify -- is that I can get all my information from anywhere. So regardless of whether I'm at home, at a local restaurant or traveling in Thailand, I can get access to all my records as long as I have Internet access or a mobile phone.

Some aspects of going paperless cost more. But I've found these offset by savings elsewhere. For example, getting all postal mail delivered electronically isn't cheap. But getting books, newspapers and magazines electronically has saved me hundreds of dollars per year. On balance, going paperless saves me a little money, but not a lot.

I've also found that, despite my Utopian goals, going completely paperless isn't possible, at least for me. Paying my city for services like trash pickup and water absolutely requires paper checks sent by mail or delivered in person. Some books simply are not available in digital form yet. And, of course, there are documents like passports that have to be physical. Police officers aren't impressed when you show them a picture of your driver's license on a mobile phone, for example.

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Despite all this, going as paperless as possible is worth doing -- the less paper, the better.

The biggest objection many have is that online records may be less secure. But that's only true sometimes and potentially. Paper records aren't all that secure, either. If you're like most people, you rely on a single paper copy of, say, receipts for taxes. Those are potentially vulnerable to theft, loss, fire and other hazards. If you're careful about encryption and good password management, and retain redundant copies of your records electronically, you can maximize security with all-digital records.

I'm going to tell you which products and services I use and have found to be best for going paperless in your personal life. Interestingly, all of these have emerged since 2006. This is truly a new world of options for going paperless. Here's what I use:

Evernote: I consider Evernote the Mother of All paperless-life enablers. The service lets you type in, paste in, automatically import and otherwise add just about anything -- documents, Web pages, photographs and other stuff. It all just goes into your Evernote account, which is then synchronized with the online, desktop and mobile phone versions and indexed for search. All of it is free unless you upgrade to the Premium version ($45 per year).

The coolest thing Evernote does, in my opinion, is that it finds words in your pictures, and indexes those words for search. That means you can use your camera phone or a digital camera to snap away at everything, then find it later with a Google-like search. The iPhone has a spectacular Evernote app that lets you capture pictures and upload them to Evernote by pushing three buttons.

Shoeboxed: Shoeboxed provides postage-paid envelopes. You stuff them full of business cards, receipts and invoices, and drop them in the mail. In two or three days, all the data on those paper documents show up online, and in a form you can use. Business card data, for example, flows right into your e-mail or contacts software, and receipts flow right into your budgeting software or services.

Evernote announced a deal with Shoeboxed this week that enables the two services to work together. Your Shoeboxed stuff goes right into Evernote.

Shoeboxed costs at least US$10 per month. I consider Shoeboxed a nice convenience, but not necessary. You can do the same thing with a digital camera. It just takes a lot longer.

Earth Class Mail: Unless you're familiar with Earth Class Mail, you may think there's no way to make paper snail mail digital. Earth Class Mail gives you a new address in the city of your choice, which you provide to every person and company that sends you mail as if you've moved to that address. Earth Class Mail receives your mail, and scans the outsides of the envelopes for you to look at online. If you click on a button that tells them to open it, the inside documents show up online for you to read. You can also opt for them to recycle, store or send the mail either before or after they open it.

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Earth Class Mail eliminates incoming clutter and frees you to open your mail from anywhere in the world. Best of all, a new service actually deposits your checks into your bank account, so it saves you trips to the bank every time you get paid.

Earth Class Mail is not cheap. The company has a wide range of plans, and generally charges more with the more mail you get. However, they do save you enormous amounts of time, and can also help you eliminate junk mail and other mail you don't want. Expect to pay at least $20 per month for Earth Class Mail.

reQall: We all need help remembering things. For centuries, we've used paper. We scribble notes to ourselves to remember all kinds of things. We carry them around or put Post-it notes all over our workstations. The free reQall service replaces all these paper notes with something far better.

You can use the reQall mobile phone applications, or just speed-dial the number. You say what it is you want to remember -- it's like leaving voice mail. The reQall service will transform your spoken words into text and remember it all for you in several powerful ways.

If you mention a time and day, for example, reQall will alert you via your BlackBerry or iPhone. So if you say "call Mom tomorrow at 1pm," your phone will ring tomorrow at 1pm and a message will pop up that says, "call Mom." If you say, "buy a loaf of bread," reQall puts that item on an online shopping list.

Items that have no specific time and date will also be retained on the site and will be available via your phone. ReQall also jogs your memory on things with occasional reminders.

Amazon Kindle2: You're familiar with the use of an Amazon Kindle or competitive e-book reader for reading electronic books, magazines and newspapers.

But I like to use my Kindle for just about any kind of paper I would normally print out and read. For example, when I speak to a group, instead of printing out paper notes for my remarks, I just convert the Word documents to a Kindle-compatible format and read them directly from my Kindle. The Kindle is great for anything you're going to read in just about any circumstances.

Living a paperless life isn't perfect. But it's better than the alternative.

Despite its long history, dead tree pulp just isn't all that great for storing data. It's fragile. It's inert. It can't be searched. And it can be lost. It burns. It fades. But most of all, it accumulates.

Paper is the stuff that clutters our lives and chains us to our homes. The "paperless office" vision is dead and gone. But thanks to brand-new products and services, we can finally live a paperless life.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com , follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.