cleaning out the basement, part 10 of 487

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or, Don't Let This Happen to You.

So, like, in the basement, we had about 25 years worth of cancelled checks, bank statements, and old bills. Yes, really.

Mostly because we didn't know how long we were supposed to keep stuff.

There are lots of websites out there, now, that will help you decide. (We love google.....)

We brought up bags of stuff from the basement, and commenced to put our little cheap-o shredder to the test.





Have you ever noticed that when something is in more pieces, it takes up more space?

This is certainly true of shredded paper..............

I filled three grocery bags with shreds and the envelopes in which the papers-now-shreds resided.

I had heard the magic "7 years for tax stuff" before, so I decided that any checks and or statements older than that were going. It's interesting how many different colors of checks we've had, over the years.....

Payment receipts for an old, paid-off mortgage? Buh-bye.

Of course you shouldn't keep old bills at all, once the next statement shows payment has been received.

I got rid of all the credit-card statements from back then, too.

We still have tax returns (including the instruction booklet things the forms came in) back to the '70s. I wanted to confirm the 7-year rule. I saw one website that said 10, but Fidelity says 7, and I think they are more reliable than the page that said 10. If we just got rid of the instruction booklets we'd be about 80% ahead of where we are, on the tax-forms-taking-up-space front.....


The little shredder doesn't like to do four checks at once, and actually gags on five. I made it so hot at one point that it quit, and took a break to recuperate. No break for me, however. I kept on separating out the credit-card statements from the other bills while I waited in hope that it would work again after a bit.

All this shredding took hours. Hours and hours. Feh.

Pondering, as I shredded [and shredded and shredded] -- it has to take MORE time to shred all that stuff if you do it as you go -- getting the shredder out, etc -- so this wasn't *exactly* a stupid way to do things......... Keeping organized and getting rid of stuff you don't need is just a PITA and that's the truth. Whether you do it all the time or once every 25 years (whether you need to or not!).

I know I will feel better when we are done, but the process does NOT make me feel better. Not a whit.

Hope for us that it's dry on Friday and Friday night, so we can put out (a ton of) recyclables. (We don't put out paper when it's going to be wet.....) The bags of paper-waiting-to-be-recycled are starting to fill up our front entryway.

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