Cleaning out old records

[chowmama]

I mean, reeaalllly old records.

For background, I took over the finances over a year ago; DH was happy to let me. He hated it so badly, that he'd put off even balancing the checking account for so long that by the time he got to it (about 4 times a year), it would take days and would finally be resolved by just 'putting in a correction' for often hundreds of dollars because it was too hard to find the mistakes. He was also way more comfortable with living close to the financial edge than I am. Now, the money was going towards extra payments for the house, cards and other loans, but any emergency meant disaster and more credit card use, resulting in more bills. The accounts now get balanced twice weekly, to the penny, and it takes 15 minutes if the computer is slow to load. The only loan is the house; no cards (one for emergencies that we use once yearly to keep it active and pay off a month later). He's getting very used to having a buffer that allows for unscheduled expenses, but I don't think his philosophy has changed - he just doesn't have to think about it now. It's a lot less stressful for both of us.

But our old records are a mess. We have (had) an old full-size file cabinet stuffed to overflowing with paper. Every check stub I ever got. Accounts we haven't had in decades. I found cards I remember calling to get replacements for because we were sure they hadn't been sent to us. Many envelopes hadn't been opened at all. And all of it shot through with personal info, so I couldn't just throw it out. My checks from the late 90s contained not only my name, but my full social security number and my full bank account number. No 'last 4 digits' here. How did we all not get our identities stolen? A bonfire would have created an ecological disaster. It all had to be shredded.

Well, I'm done with the business drawer. Sorting it took several weeks, as I gave it only an hour a day and that only on days I didn't work late. (I do have other things to do.) I kept 10 years, not 7, and there's still room in the drawer. It's all organized and labeled, so everything is easy to find. I just finished shredding this morning and I'm stunned the shredder survived. I was sure it would die with about 30 pages to go, just to piss me off. My sinuses and lungs are producing things I don't want to think about - I ended up having to wear a mask.

Speaking of things that pissed me off, I wandered over to OfficeMax to get insert cards for the front of the drawers, to label what's in them. They responded to me (politely) as if I had just asked them for a fully functional buggy whip. The first guy I talked to had never heard of such a thing. The manager said that if I had the dimensions, they'd cut me the right size. Apparently, this is very old technology, but I could have pointed out to them that they do, in fact, still sell file folders. I wonder what they put them in.

Anyway, that drawer is done. 3 drawers to go. The next drawer contains manuals and the like, many for items we haven't owned for a long time. But at least none of it will have to be shredded. Should go relatively quickly.