Shredded!

Well, the organization of Chez Necessity slowly continues. About 6 months ago (I have mentioned the procrastinating thing, right?) I cleaned through all my files, not out of any crazy desire to organize, but because I could no longer fit any new papers into said files without enduring massive paper cuts. When we lived in a house, I had a large filing cabinet and all the space I could ever desire. Since moving to a smaller space, I've downsized to a 2-drawer filing cabinet, which theoretically is enough to hold all my financial and household papers. This concept only works if I occasionally remove some old items rather than just adding new ones, which is what I finally did. I like to keep things, but even I was somewhat floored to find that I still had my financial aid applications from my senior year of high school (we're talking 1987 here....) along with just about everything else since. So, I pulled out all the old things, but didn't just throw them in the recycling, as there is so much talk about identity theft these days, and older documents seem to have your social security number on everything.

So, I tucked the papers into a basket under my dresser, to be dealt with later. Well, later ended up being today. I don't have a shredder, and don't have any interest in getting one; not only do I want to avoid spending money on something I don't really need, but space is always an issue here. Enter, the cheapie version of the shredder:

After about 45 minutes on the couch ripping everything into little strips, I now have a bag of recycling that will hopefully keep my personal information personal. Hopefully the pain in my hands will be a reminder that maybe I should do this sort of thing on a more regular (rather than every 10 or 20 years) basis. Sadly, I'm not counting on it.