What to Do with Old Bills and Paperwork

I love to hear that I may not be the only one with pay stubs from my first job :). I like the idea of a shredding company

I had accumulated quite a bit of paper too. I had a paper shredding co. come to my house and do all the shredding one day. They charged $80 for up to 300 pounds. Believe it or not I had 285 pounds to shred! It took him about 15 minutes to completely shred everything.

We pay everything electronically, and don't save anything except for receipts for things we may need to return. We staple those receipts to the instruction manuals or warranties, and file those away.

We have a shredder, but our town also has shredding events a couple of times a year. Good for you for cleaning things out!

Goodness. I am right there with you. I have been putting this off for ages! I know full well that I don't need paperwork from my first job....sheesh...the things that weigh us down...and to think...I have a shredder...I never keep it on the ready because I have 2 small kids. One day I will purge it all ;-)

The Office Supply stores offer shredding services.

For the last 2 weeks, I have been working on emptying a home of a woman that now is living in a retirement center. Next week, I will host the Garage Sale. They are prepping the house to sell.

She had all of the checks, bills, statements, correspondence going back to the 70's in her home.. Yes, all organized, but still.. 5 drawer file cabinets.. FILLED with this stuff. Also she was the secretary to several organizations from her church.. so all of that old paperwork with checks, etc.. had to be shredded.

I am fortunate to have a friend at a business that has a huge shredder.
I still had to go through all of it to remove the staples, paper clips, rubber bands, etc. We filled up the back of a Suburban with all of the seats down.. full of paper bags, filled to the tops, with all of this paper work..

My mom and her best friend are helping me prep this house.. They have both promised when this sell is over, they are going to go home and start tossing and shredding.

I bought a small shredder, and my kids like to feed it for me. I had check stubs and bank statement going back to 1986! My bank does a free shredding promo every year as well.

Do you have a shredder? I have a shredder and it works wonders for paper clutter.

Oh heaven help us, I am the same way. I look forward to the responses. Just wanted you to know that you are not alone.

Check if your town/village/county has shredding events. Ours has them about once every few months, free to residents.

some of our local libraries have free shredding & community centers
get rid of all that stuff, don't save paychecks; maybe just one year worth if you must

My husband USED to be a bill hoarder.
My neighbor's wife thinks she has to save her grocery receipts to "show" the IRS what they spend on food--Good Lord! (Mine don't make it past the front door of the grocery store!)

I started shredding the stuff myself but there was SO much it would have taken me forever with a wastebasket shredder. We did the bonfire. LOL

A quick google search showed that you're in luck! Your city is having a shredding event on 9/15:
-------------------------
Document Destruction

FREE EVENT

Minimize the risk of identity theft by participating in this free event.

When:

6/2 from 9am - 1:30pm

9/15 from 10am - 1pm

Free events are listed on the Washington State Attorney General's website. Check the website on a regular basis for a list of free events in your area.

Where:

****NEW LOCATION****

Public Works Operations Center

21233 20th Ave SE, Bothell

(behind Red Robin on Bothell Everett Hwy)

L.:

Google shredding companies in your area and put all of it in trash bags and take it there to shred them. this is what I came up with

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclien...

I know UPS stores do shredding as well. I believe it's $1.00 for the first pound and .50cents for each pound after. With as much as you have - it won't be cheap. Iron Mountain is trusted and secure. I don't know how expensive it is. However, with as much as you have - I would call around for quotes!!

If you have your own paper shredder? It will have to be done in clumps so that you don't burn it up.

Taxes should be saved for 8 years, I believe. I know we have all of ours for 10 years. but that's us. I would discard all old paychecks that are over one year old. If you are intent on keeping them? Save the one from the last week of the year.

HAPPY CLEANING AND ORGANIZING!!!

Go to Office Depot or Walmart or someplace and buy a small home shredder - the kind that fits over a trash can - and start shredding !

When I moved my Grandmother out of her house, eons ago, I found decades worth of cancelled checks (back when the banks mailed you back the physical check), paid utility bills, and miscellaneous paperwork flotsom and jetsom that I had to throw away.

Please don't be that relative - LOL

Right there with ya, sister! I went through a lot of yucky legal stuff with my ex-husband and was traumatized enough that I just kept everything---- and none of it in one spot!! (And I live in an apartment, too, so it is very inconvenient to hold onto this stuff!) So I have lots of boxes of paperwork and I have even found duplicate files for them. I try to give myself chunks of time in which to go through boxes. I did buy a shredder a while back and it is one with a double cut (or cross cut) so that you can recycle or toss the shredded paper out without worry that someone can reconfigure them and do the identity theft stuff on ya. I typically go through a box in one sitting and put things into piles for: 1) shred, 2)recycle bin (nothing identifying like charge card# or my name on these), and 3) keep. I am making headway slowly but surely, but, girlfriend, it is all baby steps. Good luck to you and please let us know how it works out!

I just take all mine to the recycling center (we don't have curbside recycling in our neighborhood so have to take them myself). And when we did have curbside I just dumped them all in the can/bin the day they went out to the curb.

You need to get a shredder and start getting rid of this stuff. Do you have a grill or can you use a charcoal grill outside of your apartment? I would start burning a little bit at a time.

I have switched most of our bills to email only, this way I am not over run with paper. Even my husband’s check stubs are electronic and if we need them we can print it (along with a copy of any bill).

So after 11 yaers of my STBXH doing all our bills, and 3 years before that an accountant doing my bills... I now have to do them myself.

Gag. Ugh. Ick. Grrrr.

I am NOT good with these (hence the accountant, which I hope to hire another one, but sort of have to be working to do that!).

ANYHOW... For my poor little no-bill-paying-ADHD-brain... I'm having to do them in triplicate.

1) All bills that arrive go into a slotted "thing" (looks like a 3 ring binder but is actually an accordian file).

2) As I pay each bill I notate it in a composition book (due, paid... which right now are often different numbers) and a note

3) When I find myself excrutiatingly perky... I'm scanning each one. Because, dollars to donuts, I'm going to lose the suckers sometime in the next year or so. But if they're in yearly image files, then at least I can find them as needed later on.

I am completely and totally hijacking my last accountant's system here. Knock on wood, it appears to be working. (Gawd, I REALLY hate this stuff).

But the scanning sounds like exactly what you need. Nixes the weight, at least, of keeping good and accurate records.

As for local shredding? The northend (Mountlake Terrace & Bothell in particular) do quarterly or bianual shredding events (I miss living in MLT!). If that's too far away, Iron Mountain is who all the local hospitals and clinics use. Super secure.