Yesterday I told you a little about my “Less is More” mantra for the new year. One of the things I wanted to do was spend less time in front of the TV so we could get more things done around the house. One of the first things we decided to tackle was our filing, it was a little behind….
While doing this we filtered out ALOT of paper waste. Many of these things had personal information on them that we wanted to shred, but quite a bit we had no problem just recycling as is. This is also the time of year I go through the files and discard most any thing over 7 years old, bills and such, Keep all taxes and related documents but you really don’t need those old cell phone, electric and medical bills.
So all of that leaves me with a lot of paper waste. Lucky for me my local recyclers will take shredded paper, We shredded any paper with names addresses or account numbers and then put the scraps in a paper bag folded over and stapled. The rest of the paper just got recycled like newspaper. Personally I would rather my shredded paper gets recycled instead of just thrown away in a land field where some one can find it. If its recycled it gets washed and made into something new and all of my personal information goes down the drain.
Only down side, we are going to have to set out our paper recycling a little at a time so our dude doesn’t hate us for setting out 7 bags at once….
I serve on the board for several professional organizations and I find the hardest thing is convincing all of the more…ahem, seasoned members that we do NOT need years and years and YEARS worth of records in big boxes of musty papers. Scan, back up, and shred the fire trap, people!
Good luck purging/shredding/recycling! 🙂
It’s funny but I’ve been busy purging all our paper waste too. Luckily for us, all of our paper waste are just waste and doesn’t contain any personal information since we went paperless with all our financial accounts. I’ve been doing it little by little too since I don’t want to take up all the room in apartment’s rubbish room (since everyone puts there rubbish there for collection). Good luck with your paper purge!