I’ve been enamored of free pdf virtual ‘printers’ like cutepdf for some time. It’s only recently that I realized that this tool and ones like it have a spot in a decluttering. This tool create what looks like another printer for your computer. To use it, it’s as simple as just selecting it as the target printer (rather than your normal hardcopy printer).

The main advantage of printing to PDF rather than HTML is that you get a single file with all the resources embedded in it, rather than a bunch of separate files and directories like you get when you save HTML. If the PDF file looks good and complete after ‘printing’ then it will stay that way. With an HTML ‘printout’ you need to be sure you’ve gotten the whole viewable page and are not just looking at data being brought in from the website via a link - which could change or disappear. There are nice ‘web whacking’ tools that can do this, but if I’m not going to actually go back and try to navigate the pages, then printing it out as PDF makes an easier to compile a complete document.

I also like the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) that printing preview of the PDF provides.

Print HTML receipts to PDF files instead of HTML - many websites provide printable receipts. Rather than adding to your clutter, print out the receipts to the PDF printer and keep in an online file entitled ‘receipts’.

Save HTML web pages - Bookmarking doesn’t guarantee that the page will resemble anything like the one you’re seeing now. By saving the page as PDF, you have a permanent archive of what the page looked like at the time.

Save Financial Reports - Your stock-trading website probably produces some nice charts and graphs. You could print them out and compile a notebook from them - or just keep the PDF files you get from printing them in a directory.

Saving manuals as PDFs (most are already in PDF) allows you to throw away the manual, travel tips, travel documents is also handy.

If you’re saving a whole magazine, newspaper or other print material just for one article, rip out the pages (perhaps including the cover), scan it in, then ‘print’ it into PDF.