As much as I like receiving snail mail that is not junk or a bill, if there is an option to go paperless and receive the notification via email, I am all for it.

Nowadays more and more people are using E-Vite to spread the news of their event. People can receive their bills and pay stubs as a PDF attachment and print them out whenever necessary. I hate clutter and having a lot of stuff. At first a few sheets of paper doesn’t seem like a lot and doesn’t seem to take up space, but then before you know it, you have hundreds of sheets of paper in piles all over the place. They end up cluttering every spare inch of flat surface.

Every so often I go on a paper purge and sort through all my loose papers. I find it just as satisfying as doing a physical purge of stuff.  However, I wouldn’t have to do it as often if every company and organization went paperless. I do understand the importance of having hard copies of certain documents, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for everything to be printed out.

A small, yet significant piece of paper that seems to clutter my wallet here and there is the receipt. Grocery receipts are often the worse because they tend to have the most items on them, thus they tend to be longest piece of paper in my wallet. It has to be folded several times over in order to fit in my wallet. Most of the time, I ended up just stuffing it in my wallet.

Although I make most of my purchases using a credit card so I can track the amount spent, I still like being able to have a copy of the receipt in case I have been overcharged for items or didn’t receive a discount I was entitled to. The credit card only shows the total amount of your purchase, not every single item that was purchased at that time, which is why a receipt is always good to keep for a period of time.

How many times have you ended up losing a receipt or throwing out a receipt by accident, but ended up needing it to make a return? Throwing out a receipt can be automatic for some of us. I am no stranger to throwing out a receipt that was needed. As disgusting as this may seem, there have been a few rare occasions where I have dug into one of the trash baskets in the house to retrieve the receipt. It was usually the office trash basket though, rather than the kitchen or bathroom one.

Prior to my trip to Greece, I had done a bit of clothes shopping to have something decent to wear. When the salesperson had finished ringing up my purchases, she asked whether or not I wanted my receipt printed out or have it emailed to me.  Without even really thinking about it, I automatically said I wanted a hard copy, but was quite intrigued by the idea of having it emailed to me. I had never heard of such of thing and made a note to myself to choose the email option next time I shopped at that store.

This was the first store that has ever asked me that option and in this digital age, I’m surprised that more stores haven’t followed suit. We often tap our credit cards and debit cards to make payments, or sign on the electronic screen. They often ask us if we want to sign up for their e-mail newsletter, so people have given their email addresses from time to time.

If you’ve ever worked the cash register at retail, you are all too familiar with the annoyance of running out of receipt paper, telling the customer to wait and putting the roll of paper back into the register. Mind you, it doesn’t take THAT long and doesn’t happen too often because the receipt rolls are quite large, but it’s still an annoyance when it does happen, nonetheless.

Providing the option of emailing receipts would mean stores wouldn’t have to spend money on receipt rolls (I have no idea how much they cost) and of course, it would be better for the environment. Unless the email was deleted, the receipt wouldn’t be lost. You would be able to keep a ton of receipts on file and not get annoyed by all those paper receipts stuffed in your wallet.

Looking at my email receipt would be a lot easier than digging into my wallet for that crumpled piece of paper.

Do you like the idea of having a hard copy of the receipt or would you prefer to have the receipt emailed to you? Do you hate it when your wallet is stuffed with paper receipts?