While digging through the archives of lifehack.org, I visited this page:
Evilsoft.org: Instruction pamphlet overload we're everywhere..... describing how to organize your instruction manuals for appliances, etc.
That seemed like an awful lot of work compared to what I do and mine results in no paper at all.
- Type the model number, manufacturer, "manual" and "PDF" into Google and start digging through the results. Remove hyphens and seperate letters and numbers in the model numbers to bring up more results. Almost everything in my house has had an online version of the manual for download.
- Save the PDF's to a single location, broken down by whatever organization scheme you like.
- Make sure this folder is included in your backup scheme.
- Pitch the now redundant manuals and use the drawer and filing space for the mountains of other crap that needs to be filed.
There are 2-3 manuals that weren't available. However, a few minutes with the scanner and I had digital versions of those too.