Books are nice, but they do tend to stack up
Books are nice, but they do tend to stack up. (Photo: iStockphoto)

An elite prep school in Ashburnham, Mass., has upset bibliophiles everywhere by exchanging its 20,000-volume book collection for a digital database of books that holds millions of titles, says NPR.org.

Now, instead of perusing a hushed atmosphere of stacks of books, students at Cushing Academy openly chat in the library and can read their “books” on 68 Amazon Kindles provided by the campus or on laptops given to each student by the school.

Now the school’s action to scrap of all its books to go digital may be extreme, but perhaps it’s a good example for homeowners to follow -- or at least in part. Getting rid of printed material for digital versions would be a good step for homeowners (like me) to take -- whose homes are swamped with so many bills, documents, magazines and books that there’s precious little living space.

Is your home being overrun by paper? Here are a few steps that you can to do lighten up the paper and perhaps save some trees:

-- Check with your bank, credit card company and other services from which you receive bills to see whether you can receive online statements instead and pay those bills online.

-- Cut down on the unwanted catalogs you receive by going to http://www.catalogchoice.org and removing yourself from certain catalog lists for free.

- Decrease junk mail by using the free service offered by the Direct Marketing Association.

-- Donate already read books to the local library or to local charities that will take books, such as the Vietnam Veterans of America. Instead of buying new books and magazines, think about reading ones from the library instead. Or, if you really want your own copy of a book, you could purchase a reader like the Amazon Kindle.

-- Get a scanner and create digital documents of any paper documents that you have or receive. (The Moneyblog on MSN.com offers tips on scanners and other ways to go digital.)

 -- If you’re like me and clip out articles from magazines and newspapers, think about finding the digital versions of those publications online and saving the digital versions of what you want instead. Many magazine websites (such as GoodHouseKeeping.com) and recipe websites (like Food Network.com) offer services that let you save and store your articles and recipes on their site.

So, if you can bear to do it, weed out all those bills, magazines and books and go digital -- you might uncover a lot more living space.

Readers: Have you found a way to clear out the paper clutter from your home that you'd like to share? (And we don't mean just tossing things in the trash!)—Lauren Baier Kim