bigmacbear: Me in a leather jacket and Hockey Night in Canada ball cap, on a ferry with Puget Sound in background (Default)
bigmacbear ([personal profile] bigmacbear) wrote2005-10-14 04:03 pm

Records Retention

Lately I find myself spending more and more time digging through boxes upon boxes of mundane papers I've collected over the years. Cancelled checks (just to be cute, I labeled most of my envelopes full of these "Cancelled Czechs"), bank statements, credit card statements, paycheck stubs, etc.

The objective of digging through all these papers now is so I don't have to pack and move them later. I'm surprised, though, that the experts in analrecords retention recommend destroying most of these -- bank statements after three months, pay stubs at year end (or once you receive your W-2), etc. I have papers that date back 20 years in little envelopes, filed for posteriorposterity.

The shredder will be busy this weekend, let me tell you.

[identity profile] robearal.livejournal.com 2005-10-14 08:44 pm (UTC)(link)
You might want to invest in a bottle of shredder lubricant to keep your shredder happy through its munchfest. We went through a frenzy of shredding old docs a couple years ago and after several hours, the poor shredder started getting a bit winded and sluggish.