Mike Elgan, a writer for ComputerWorld (among others), makes an interesting case about “digitizing everything”. By this he doesn’t necessarily mean just documents; he means everything. 

The short version: Photograph everything you own, and upload it all to Evernote.
I have written about Evernote elsewhere on this blog, and it is a terrific product that would work really well for this purpose. 
Evernote isn’t just some photo-gathering site; with Evernote you could put a key word in each photo that you dump up there, which would give you a fully searchable index of everything. Your own little Google of everything that is “you”. Pretty neat concept.
Anyhow, read Mike Elgan’s thoughts, in ComputerWorld, here. 
And…I just may have to do this…