The Sweet Joys of Shredding
Category: Downsizing
September 14, 2020 – Downsizing, ridding out, whatever you want to call it, paring down your stuff is an important job in retirement. This past week your Editor and his wife had the pleasure of safely disposing more than a dozen boxes of important papers that were cluttering up their home. Here are some tips on how you can do the same (with links to many of our other downsizing articles at end).
Don’t leave cleaning up to your surviving spouse or children. It’s just not fair. Give your kids a break – they have lives to live – so don’t leave them with a basement or attic full of old papers or documents to dispose of. They will have no idea what was is important and what is not.
Comments on "The Sweet Joys of Shredding"
Louise says:
Keep an eye out for your local senior centers too. Ours has an annual shred event and is free! However, our scheduled event was cancelled this year due to Covid-19. I had accumulated a years worth of papers and was going to go to the local Rotary shred event and missed it too. So, just recently bought a shredder. The Hub has been diligently shredding the stuff and there is more to go. I have to weed out the storage areas little by little.
If you have a large accumulation of papers, a shred event is the best thing because you can get rid of a lot of stuff quickly. Doing the shredding yourself is super boring and takes time. Most home shredders are wimpy and you can only use them for about 10 minutes at a time to keep the shredder from sudden death. You also need to consider using lubrication sheets. They are kind of expensive but keep the cutting blades from dulling.
When taking my paper to the shred event, I never sort out the envelopes for advertising and inserts. I just leave all of it in the envelope. With your personal shredder you probably don't want to run all that thru your shredder. Just the statements with personal information. When taking your paperwork to the shred event you can also leave paper clips on the paperwork. On my personal machine, I would avoid that.
I have had several machines over the years and they have eventually conked out. This new one was much more expensive but I don't have much faith it will last.
Sally says:
Just like the editor to read the very first paragraph of this article. Sounds to me like he also disposed of his wife? This just struck me as so funny, but maybe not to his wife.
Editor's comment: Whoops, that was a bad one! I will show the uncorrected version to her (which due to a badly positioned phrase suggested I had shredded her along with the papers). Thank you for noticing that serious editing shortfall. Although sometimes things do get cluttered in our home, happily she has not been shredded and is still very much alive. She will get a kick of this latest evidence of my infirmity!
Pam Christie says:
I was shredding old files when CRUNCH/grind/stop. Turns out the was a cat's license tag on the back of the receipt. My husband couldn't believe that I didn't notice the tag. Off we went to buy a new shredder. We brought the new one into the house, unboxed it, and Harry began to shred some more paper when CRUNCH/grind/stop. Did I mention we had TWO cats, hence TWO tags. He slowly raised his head and said "oops". We weren't in the house 5 minutes before we had another dead shredder! Now we're catless and our 3rd shredder is doing well.
Editor's comment: Love this story! So easy to happen. Thanks.