After my December clutter-purge, I realized I hadn’t yet dealt with a huge stash of confidential documents – mostly old tax returns. We have a huge, two-story garage that provides a wealth of storage in its upper regions but it also hides a wealth of trash. They say it’s safe to destroy tax records after seven years. Why don’t I trust the IRS? I saved `em for eight just to be sure. Most of the account numbers were probably defunct but without combing through the bags, I couldn’t be sure. A few years back, when burn barrels were still allowed in the City, we would periodically rip open a bag of outdated tax returns and toss them in the barrel with other paper trash. Of course, we wouldn’t remember to do it every time, then burning was outlawed and we were left with dirty boxes of musty wads of previously important papers.
Several years back, in a pre-garage sale mode, I had pulled a bunch of the tax bundles off of the shelf piled them at the top of the stairs, intending to do something with them. Apparently I never did and Mark finally asked what was in the pile…..Whoops! Shredding was an option but I don’t have the time or patience for the grinding noise to sit and run one page at a time though the marginal shredder that we have.
In the Bay Area, you’ll see trucks parked in the business district collecting documents for confidential shredding from businesses. We don’t have commercial services like that up here but we do have HCAR -- a local non-profit that serves the developmentally disabled. Teams of HCAR clients are employed in the community and after making some phone calls, I found out that one of the services they offer is confidential shredding. They came and PICKED UP our papers and stored them securely until they could be shredded. When it was time to shred, their team went through the bags and boxes, removing clips and other miscellaneous at which time it was weighed and I was billed. The cost? A mere 37 cents a pound. I got the bill the other day. It was a little over two weeks between the day they collected our stuff and the day it was shredded. Mark said they took five or six boxes of paperwork which apparently weighed 83.2 pounds. My bill was for $30.78. That’s a cool deal in my book.
So I got rid of a BUNCH of stuff for which there is no easy disposal method. HCAR clients were employed. The paper was recycled. Life is good. Now there is space to store more stuff in the garage.
