Dealing with Electronic Cords/Manuals

We've been slowly working our way through getting our office/spare room in shape over the last few months, so this response to a reader's question at Unclutter about storing materials/cords of electronic equipment is helpful.  I especially like their idea about user manuals:

All manuals for items we plan to sell or donate go inside a plastic sheet protector of a three-ring binder. If we don’t plan to get rid of the item and simply keep it until it breaks, we go online, find a .PDF of the manual, and link it to a spreadsheet. If the manual isn’t online, we’ll scan it, save it as a .pdf, and link the file to the spreadsheet. Once we have access to a digital copy, we recycle the print version. Learn more about the spreadsheet method in our 2007 article “Organizing digitally scanned data.”

Comments have been made recently, expressing a desire to get my ("ugly") file cabinet out of the office/second bedroom.  I have objected on the grounds that some stuff in there would be a hassle to go down to the basement (the proposed new location for the file cabinet) to get every time we need it.  The idea about the owner's manuals brings up an interesting point though; we need very little of this in actual hard copy at our fingertips. Investing in an inexpensive feed scanner would probably be a great way to allow for a lot of stuff to get out of our way and into the basement, yet readily at our fingertips whenever (and wherever) we need it.