Papers, Papers, Papers! Anyone Else Inundated?

Pepper said:
So many papers........I'm inundated. Try to ignore them, hide them in boxes, closets, under the bed. Can't bear to go through mother's papers. I'm bad, leaving a mess for my son.
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Or, you could try this Pepps...... šŸ˜Š
 

Whenever possible, I pay online or by phone, but I still get paper statements. When I die, I want the executor of my will to be able to easily look back and see what I owe and what I've paid. I feel that would be very hard for him to do without paper records.
 
Just got my own end-of-month paperwork done. Mostly electronic statements and spreadsheets.

However I just got an email saying my Credit Union will have a "Shred Day" on an upcoming Saturday morning. "Drive in, pop the trunk, we do the rest. Up to 2 boxes per person."

A little creepy, requires a bit of trust.
 
I go to the end of the driveway to get the mail, I look at it as I walk back, as I pass the garbage can most of it goes inside.
The bank pays our utilities and cable by direct debit and it and Vanguard send our statements online. That's pretty much it since we pay everything else at point of sale/service.

The only thing we get a bill for is our lawn service and that's almost the only thing we write checks for.

All of our important papers are kept inside one 8 x10, 3" high box that once held printer paper.
 
I have a file cabinet in the garage with all of my mother's paperwork. She passed away in November 2021. I just don't have the gumption to take it all and have it shredded.

I have a credenza with paper files from my career. I retired in 2020. I've just started to go through and throw them out. Any files that have records of my former employees I have to shred.

Last year I started to have tax returns older than 5 years shredded at Office Depot. I watched them thread all of them.
 
I have been saving electronic copies (on the computer) of all the important "stuff" for at least 20 years. So I still have everything I will ever need in one place (including two back up, independent drives). Easy to find anything I want to--arranged by year and subject folders. Takes up no space!
 
I have a cross shredder too. But it is not too busy, as I put many papers to be shredded in paper bags and take them once a year to a large truck with shredder that my retirement community brings on campus. Most of my mail about 4-8 per day are charitable solicitations, many are from charities I had never heard of. I must have gotten on some massive mailing list that charities use!
 
oscash said:
Don't you just hate it when you're shredding old documents, and it suddenly gets caught in the blades and you spend the next half hour trying to pry it apart.? What a waste of a day.
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lol yes but that happens when you get greedy and start putting in to much paper .

The shredder I have now bought 4 years ago for little under 200 and now 400 but I only shred weekly stuff .
 
We have regular bonfires & use the papers to start the fires. In winter, I'll shred everything & put it in recycle.

The paperwork from my Mom is now past the date that it needs to be kept, so I'll go through it one more time & get rid of most of it. I want to make sure there's no birth certificates or things like that in there. Another year or so on MIL paperwork to go through.

We keep the required number of years of tax paperwork in a file & rotate the oldest one out when the new one goes in. It took me a week to clean out our desk a while back & go through everything. I've tried not to let it get out of hand, but it's time to go through it again.

I print out important paperwork & file it. I found if you toss down a copy of something, it's harder for a company or a person to argue with it. You never know when a computer/printer will go belly up when you need access or the data will go into never-never-land not to be seen again.

Hubby & I was happy that his Mom didn't throw anything away. We found so much that we needed when it was time to sell the house that documented when things was done & how much it cost. So some times it's good when people hoard paperwork.
 
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Used to be a paper hoarder. Downsizing over the years has taught me one thing. With the cloud most places have your back in case of record keeping. It's been a few years I think since I needed to find something that was kept & stored. I always opt out of paper or statements sent to me. The only thing I keep nowadays is digital payment receipts, but for no more than a year. The rest is just a pain, I don't need. I do have birth, death, titles, marriage certificates,,, etc. in my fireproof safe. Went from several boxes down to a few items stored.
 

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