Hoarding Paper

I confess; I am a terrible packrat, especially when it comes to documents. I save every receipt for as long as I possibly can and I don't know why. Okay. case in point: Monday my wife bought a new comforter for our bed. It was time. But that left a storage issue because she wanted to have the old one dry cleaned and stored. The only place to store it is in our master bedroom closet, but on the highest shelf I had all these old file boxes. They were receipts and tax returns and records dating back to 1984, when we were married. Would I please remove those boxes so that the old comforter and pillows can be stored there?

Dutifully I brought the boxes down and start pouring through them. Walgreens receipts, cancelled checks, bank statements, tax returns, W-2 statements, charitable donations, worksheets, Quicken reports, registers, medical bills, you name it all dating back before our son was born to a period up to ten years ago. Organized, yes. Unnecessary, absolutely!

I looked through everything and even called my tax advisor, who told me I would be safe pitching tax returns more than ten years old. So, I brought out the shredder last night and started shredding. OMG I cannot believe how much paper I had up there! I've filled ten 30 gallon bags of shredded paper to this point and still have two boxes of cancelled checks to dispose of tomorrow after school. It was fascinating to travel back in time to see how truly far we have come financially, but still I'd rather have my feet up watching a game.

A dear friend tonight told me about a product called Neat Desk, a scanner with software to electronically store all this stuff on a harddrive. It eliminates the paper, which is safer from a fire hazard stand point, and the information can be imported in Excel files, Quicken documents (I use Quicken for personal finances), and Outlook. It's available at the office supply stores so I will definitely entertain picking this up.