In my case I’ve taken the really important stuff like birth certificates, etc., and put them into its own folder. Everything else is going into a simple box. I’m not getting that many documents by snail mail. It’s actually quite easy to find the physical document: I know from the scam that I’ve received the document on first of June two thousand eighteen. So I can go back to two thousand eighteen June and then there are maybe two or three documents which I’ve received in that time frame. You can also simply write an ongoing number on the document.

And how do I tell from the scan if there is a paper document? My scanner is naming those PDF in a typical method. If it is called Receipt_000123.pdf, I know that it is coming from my scanner and that there is something physical

I’m not aging out papers. I’m still on the first box, so everything is okay storage wise.

even more demanding services (Immich, etc).

Just for your information, I’m running Immich on an old Optiplex and it does work without demanding a lot of power. Yes, if you import your library, it will take some time to process everything. But after that is done, the amount of computing you’ll need is actually near nothing. Processing the images is a one-time job. And if you’re not going around taking thousands of pictures every day, Immich will not demand much power. Most of the time it sits idle while not new pictures are uploaded and nobody looks at the pictures.

(it’s the same with Plex or Jellyfin BTW: If you’re not running the server for your extended family, you get away with cheap hardware)

If it’s digital, I’m keeping it. A scan it’s just a few kilobytes. And for a normal private person, the storage amount needed is absolutely minimal. Even if you get one important document per mail per day and scan it with a 1MB filesize, you’re looking at 365MB per year. If you’re 20 right now and are looking at a life expectancy of 85, that would be 365MB*65 = 23GB of storage.

My opinion: Plex has made it clear that they want your money. They don’t want you to host your own media and be happy with that. They want you to pay a subscription.

The whole Plex Pass Lifetime subscription is kind of a trap. You might be getting away with paying once currently, but let’s be honest: That means that they have taken your money once. And a some time in the future, a MBA dude will notice that they have a lot of non-paying heavy users (meaning: users who have paid several years ago, which is not relevant for the revenue goals of the current quarter) - and they will try to get you to pay again and again. You might be okay with that, but if you don’t want to get hassled, you need to switch to something else.