<p>My project as of late is to go through those stacks of old, old bills, bank statements, insurance paperwork, etc., and get rid of them. This is a huge, horrible job. There must be a better way of dealing with this! While my shredder is stuck on “Overheat” I figured I’d see what other CC’ers do with all their “stuff”.</p>
<p>First things first - I don’t think we’re quite ready for all-paperless billing yet. I may be ready to tell the bank not to send me statements (since most of the ones I’m shredding are unopened). but H is old fashioned and wants paper bills for what needs to be paid.</p>
<p>Having said that, I can’t seem to find the reason ofor having KEPT all these bills once we pay them. Just in case? Because that’s what my parents did? I don’t know. I dont’ think we’ve ever had to refer to any old bills, and even if we did, I’d never be able to find what I’m looking for anyway. So easy to find online though…</p>
<p>Tell me about your systems! Do you HAVE a system? What do you keep, where do you keep it, and for how long? What goes in the trash right away? Do you shred EVERYTHING or just things with really sensitive info on it (Credit card #'s, SSN, etc)? How often do you “purge”?</p>
<p>I figure if I can gather up enough of your strategies maybe I can piece some tips together and come up with something that’ll work for me…</p>
<p>Help! Now let me see if the shredder has cooled down…</p>
<p>We’ve gone to paperless billing for a lot of things.</p>
<p>We only shred the pages with sensitive data on it, and just recycle the rest.</p>
<p>If you have that much to shred, you could</p>
<ul>
<li><p>burn it instead.</p></li>
<li><p>join my credit union, which offered regularly-scheduled free shredding days.</p></li>
<li><p>see if your work has bins for collecting confidential papers to be shredded and start dumping in a little at a time. Or find a local business that shreds, I think Staples and a lot of copy shops off the service. Don’t know what it costs.</p></li>
<li><p>take a small chance and just throw it out. I doubt people ripping through your garbage bags looking for stuff is a big risk factor.</p></li>
<li><p>buy a better shredder.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I see Staples is currently offering 50% off:</p>
<p>We only keep bills that could have tax implications (months with student book purchases, etc). The rest we shred and recycle. </p>
<p>We just make sure not to move the recycle bin out too early. I can tell you horror stories of people that threw away blank checks and old credit card statements only to suffer from identity theft.</p>
<p>We’ve gone paperless for everything we can go paperless for and everything is available online if we need to look at something. If it’s something I need to “keep” I save it in PDF form on my computer. We still have PILES of mail and crap. I’ve gotten better about opening mail by the garbage/recycling. We also only shred stuff that needs shredding. I agree with boxing up the old stuff and just burning it–we did that last year with a bonfire in the back yard. I can’t help after that because I have piles of paper too…</p>
<p>I handle all mail as soon as possible after it comes in. With credit cards, I check each billed item against the receipts I have and then pay in full. Then I rip up any identifying info and put it into my kitchen trash – don’t have a shredder, figure the tomato sauce, etc. in the trash and the small pieces are deterrent enough. Save only the receipts I may need for servicing. Since I pay in full each month no need to hold on to old bills.</p>
<p>Papers I need to keep (auto insurance renewals, etc.) and paid and filed in a file cabinet. Occasionally I go through that and discard old stuff. </p>
<p>Anything needed for taxes is marked “F-taxes 2013” and stuffed in a very large heavy duty envelope. Stays there until tax time, at which point I can go through and sort. </p>
<p>Some simple bills (gas and electric, water, etc.) are on auto pay (deducted from checking) since I don’t need to check them off against receipts. I just make a note in my check ledger for them.</p>
<p>Sounds like I have a system but the truth is I still have piles of old “to be filed” stuff. My resolution every year is to go through it, winnow it down, and get every piece of paper in the house organized. Same resolution each year but I really don’t want to take this into old age. ;)</p>
<p>I suggest going paperless with things like utilities because the only charges will be your usage, without some merchant or fraud issue that needs resolution.</p>
<p>Paper bills, receipts I need to keep go in an accordion file for that year. I sort them each spring as I do taxes. </p>
<p>We tear our names off all the stuff that comes to the house, shred those pieces and recycle the rest.</p>
<p>I started a topic on this last weekend. I’m basically putting bills, either PDFs of pictures, in a notebook application on a computer with offsite backup. My desks are a lot cleaner this week. I went to paperless on several accounts and just import the PDFs or create PDFs with my Mac and store them on a computer.</p>
<p>It helps that we don’t have a lot of extra space in our house. We have a tiny room (good size for a newborn and a crib, not much use as an actual bedroom) that we use as an office. It gives us great incentive to clean out the old papers because there isn’t much room to store them.</p>
<p>My personal hording issue is with magazines. I have to force myself to keep them in one single giant wooden salad bowl, and to throw out the bottom ones when they start to spill out.</p>
<p>I loved looking through years and years of old National Geographic stored in an upstairs bookcase when I was a kid. But nobody does that anymore. It sort of kills me to recycle them, but I can’t even find a charity that will take them.</p>
<p>eastcoastcrazy…my H is a car magazine hound. He saves them ALL. We have car mags going back to the 70’s, I made him store them out of sight in a credenza in the basement. </p>
<p>I feel like a new person. $23 at Staples and “this house…is clean…” :)</p>
<p>Now, to see if I can convince H to move to paperless billing.</p>
<p>My husband is the bill payer and has changed many bills to paperless. The problem with this on some occasion is he forgets to pay a bill as he gets so many emails and it gets dropped to the bottom of his inbox. My husband is overworked and I have tried to take over the bill pay, but his type A personality will not allow that!</p>
<p>The other problem is I don’t see the bill to check the charges. My husband has a horrible problem of paying a bill without checking the charges. I have solved that by having our main Amex bill be mailed as that is the card that I use 99% of the time; I then try to remember to check the other credit cards online periodically to look for errant charges. </p>
<p>I don’t think it is necessary, but my husband scans every paper bill and keeps it on his desktop and saves the PDF of all the paperless bills. His computer has our entire life history in bills ;)</p>
<p>Justamom, I am NOT introducing my husband to yours. It took me a while but I convinced DH that magazines about cars and computers were probably obsolete when they arrived. We keep ONE years worth and recycle the oldies.</p>
<p>Bills…we shred six months after payment…except I did keep those college bills until the kids graduated!</p>
<p>I pay everything I can online and have a small recycling bin in my office for paper that I empty into the larger bin that the town collects every two weeks.</p>
<p>Here’s an option. One is Shred-it which is a national mobile shredding service that comes to you and shreds 1000 pounds in front of you for $150 without burning out your shredder. You can Google and find out i there are ones in your area. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get up to 1000 pounds and maybe you could get a few neighbors to go in with you.
We recycle all non personal things ( magazines, newspaper etc) and last year we recycled 2500 pounds. The only reason we know the amount is that our recycling service honored the top ten recyclers ( we were #2). How? I take all the junk mail from work home and go through it over the recycling bin…Now I know why the mailman hates delivering all the junk…</p>
<p>My sig other, being rather ADD came up with a system. The shoe box. Every CC bill, receipt, water bill, bank statement goes into the shoe box for the year. It is not too hard to find the appropriate credit card statement in the sequential layers. After a few years, tossing an old shoe box full is not so hard. </p>
<p>Recent store receipts go into a ceramic jar, purged every so often. Bills are in an open place on a shelf till paid, when they go in the shoe box. </p>
<p>Anything to do with taxes is in a separate file folder for the year. Same for college related bills, folder for each kid. </p>
<p>Just came home from vacation, and I decided that mail is one of the more unpleasant parts of coming home. A large pile of unessential paper. </p>
<p>Jem, I agree. There still are too many piles that need sorting, from busy times.</p>
<p>I have Great Lakes system refined–bank statements are in one shoe box and bills in another. And receipts go into a cardboard box to be either fire fodder, tossed or shredded. After a year or so the bill box is fire fodder too. Or gerbils do a great job too!</p>
<p>Ohh two shoe boxes. Novel, exciting. I like the fire idea. More fun than shredding, effective, and cheaper than paying for someone else to shred. </p>
<p>Now if someone could invent something that turned old bills into cat litter at home, many problems could be solved at once!</p>
<p>When my mother died, she had well over 30 yellow envelopes…each for one year. Inside was the tax return for that year and all of her bills for the year (yes…12 phone bills, 12 electric bills…etc). We burnt out five shredders getting rid of them. </p>
<p>It taught me that I do NOT wants kids to have to do the same thing.</p>
<p>Electronic bills for utilities, auto/home insurance and auto payments. Anything tax-related goes in a box. (That includes all Credit Card statements.) Everything else goes in the indoor or outdoor fireplace, depending on the season.</p>