Reducing the documents

We are going through a reduction stage at our house where we are trying to minimize what we have and really only keep things that have value or use to us. Unfortunately, for me, that means having to go through a LOT of papers because I am a self-admitted paper pack rat.

Between saving newspapers containing articles I wrote during my tenure as a newspaper journalist, genealogy documents and photographs as the self-delegated family historian, and records for all sorts of things like medical stuff, tax stuff, vehicles, etc., that is a whole lot of paper I have acquired in my home. I finally bit the bullet and have focused my energies sporadically over the last week to really look through what I have in and around my file cabinet of important papers and keep only what’s necessary.

This meant asking myself a few questions:
~ Is this document still relevant? Oil change receipts from a vehicle we haven’t owned in over a year? Probably not.
~ Is this document important to keep? At one point, I had my tax returns from my first job in 1999. I think I finally shredded those about five years ago. Tax documents are one of those things that are important to keep for at least three years (per the IRS) for your basic filings. For more information, check out the IRS website: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/how-long-should-i-keep-records
~ Am I able to get this document electronically? Bank statements were one of those things where I signed up for electronic statements so I wouldn’t get the paper copies. It still took a few months to cease so the few that I have received went into the shredder.
~ Do I absolutely HAVE to have a physical copy in my possession? My marriage certificate, yes, probably should hang on to that but my medical records from five years ago? I could scan those and save them in a couple of places as PDFs for future access if needed.

After sorting my piles and files (and yes, I unfortunately still have more to go through), I had a nice stack of papers that was ready for the shredder. I prefer to shred as oppose to toss for a couple of reasons. Preserving my privacy about what is on those documents and I have a youngster who finds shredding fun so why not let him enjoy helping? One thing to point out that all of my shredded paper is simple text documents; nothing glossy was in my shredding. Now that you have a lovely pile of shredded papers, what can you do with them?

There are actually a few things you can do with them. You can take them to a city-hosted paper shredding event near you where they will haul your shredded paper off for recycling. You could reuse your shred as packing material for fragile items. You can actually put your shredded paper in your compost bin and turn it into new compost. The only thing about that is if you put in too much shredded paper, it can throw off your nitrogen to carbon ratio; too much carbon slows down the composting process (see this Sierra Club article for more information: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2013-2-march-april/ask-mr-green/hey-mr-green-can-you-compost-shredded-paper).

Growing up, we’d sometimes burn our paper and then turn it into the soil. There is quite a bit of discussion about the environmental impact of that versus recycling it, weighing the positives of recycling paper over turning it to ash. As always when burning, if you opt to go that route, be sure to know your local restrictions for burning and rules of your municipality.

Paper is something that we can reduce our consumption of by simply not printing unless absolutely necessary and when we do print, recycle the paper when we are done. Electronic books rather than printed books might be another option to explore when finding reading material. If you have a tattered book that has reached the end of its life on the shelf, before you toss it, see if you can repurpose those pages into something else like a piece of art or reuse them in a paper mache project with your kids. I have seen people turn book pages into paper flowers and others who can fold the pages and created 3D words from a book that is standing upright with the pages fanned out. I have even seen a tutorial on how to turn brown paper bags like from the grocery store into wall coverings.

The next time your finger hovers over the “print” key, think twice. Do you really need the physical document or would digital work just as well? Do you truly need to get that vehicle bill each month in the mail or would an electronic reminder to your email suffice? Let’s get creative in reducing how much paper we use and what we do use, think about how it could be recycled or reused in another fashion. Go green, fellow Texans!