A shredder is your new best friend

One of the most fulfilling tasks when organizing is shredding. You can see immediate results and get that instant gratification we all love.

Some of the most troublesome clutter I see around homes is paper piles. Stacks of unopened mail, old correspondence, receipts and other paper can become overwhelming. Accumulated paper piles block parts of the room you need to clean which can result in an excess of dust and other allergens. Paper can even become a fire hazard or enticement for rodents.

Dealing with the paper is an ongoing problem. It is constantly entering our homes via the mail. Soon it will be the holiday season and we will be bombarded with sales catalogs, flyers and other advertising. If you are interested in stopping the catalog deluge, visit DMAchoice.org. It can take up to 90 days to get off of all of the lists, so the sooner you do this, the better. You probably won’t see a difference until next year though.

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) the consumer credit reporting companies can send you offers that you did not request. But, also under the FCRA, you can opt out of those offers. By visiting Opt Out Prescreen you can get rid of those annoying credit card and insurance offers that come in the mail.

As you wait for these things to take effect, you still have a lot of paper coming in the house. You get your regular bills and statements unless you sign up for paperless billing. It is necessary to visit the websites of each of the companies like BGE, your bank, credit card companies, etc. to request paperless billing on each.

With all of that happening, some paper continues to come into your home. A shredder works well when you have old tax receipts or other papers you no longer need. A shredder will take care of anything with your personal information that you don’t want other people to see. Some home shredders will even shred DVDs that might have old financial information on them. Here is a good shredder from Amazon that handles a lower volume of paper or the Powershred for higher volume that also handles CDs, DVDs and credit cards.

If you have a huge amount of shredding to do, there are regular shredding events where you can drive your papers to a location for disposal like one on October 10 in Catonsville. Baltimore City has a shredding event on October 21 from 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. at Patterson High School.

However you decide to get rid of paper, whether it’s shredding it or eliminating it before it even gets to you, finding a way to reduce paper in your home is a good idea. If the shredding project is too much for you right now, contact me and we can talk about your options.