In my recent post about "takeaways from Japan" I spoke about a willingness to experiment and be playful with the built environment. I said that quite often people design homes around what they want, as opposed to what they think might broadly appeal to the market. So today, let's look at an example. Below is a site on the outskirts of Tokyo, about an hour from the center of the city. The architect — Kamakura Studio — describes it as being situated in a "new town" where about 75% of the residents have moved in within the past decade. And like Japan as a whole, problems of aging and population decline are expected in the future.

Last week I picked up an Epson document scanner with the hope of going paperless in my home office. I know I’m late to this party, but just hadn’t gotten around to researching and selecting the right machine. Manually filing papers is passé, time consuming, and impractical in smaller living spaces.

Let me tell you: I am so impressed by how quickly I was able to clear off my desk and throw everything directly into Google Drive and Evernote. Now I have an empty desk and I can access any of these files from my phone. Decluttering is a great feeling.

I am sure that many of you are already doing this, but if you aren’t, consider investing in a quality scanner with a good automatic document feeder that does double sided scans. If the process is quick and painless, you’ll be more likely to do it on a regular basis. That was my rationale at least.

One of the things I like about living in a smaller space is that it forces you to live more minimally, which is something I am constantly aspiring to do. For me, going paperless is a step in that direction.

In my recent post about "takeaways from Japan" I spoke about a willingness to experiment and be playful with the built environment. I said that quite often people design homes around what they want, as opposed to what they think might broadly appeal to the market. So today, let's look at an example. Below is a site on the outskirts of Tokyo, about an hour from the center of the city. The architect — Kamakura Studio — describes it as being situated in a "new town" where about 75% of the residents have moved in within the past decade. And like Japan as a whole, problems of aging and population decline are expected in the future.

Last week I picked up an Epson document scanner with the hope of going paperless in my home office. I know I’m late to this party, but just hadn’t gotten around to researching and selecting the right machine. Manually filing papers is passé, time consuming, and impractical in smaller living spaces.

Let me tell you: I am so impressed by how quickly I was able to clear off my desk and throw everything directly into Google Drive and Evernote. Now I have an empty desk and I can access any of these files from my phone. Decluttering is a great feeling.

I am sure that many of you are already doing this, but if you aren’t, consider investing in a quality scanner with a good automatic document feeder that does double sided scans. If the process is quick and painless, you’ll be more likely to do it on a regular basis. That was my rationale at least.

One of the things I like about living in a smaller space is that it forces you to live more minimally, which is something I am constantly aspiring to do. For me, going paperless is a step in that direction.