Disposing of Old Papers in Bulk

A few days ago, I spent some time cleaning out a closet in our house that was mostly full of unnecessary stuff. I wound up recycling the vast majority of the contents of the closet and ended up giving away many of the other things I found in there.

One of the items I was left with after cleaning out this closet was a box full of older financial papers. There were statements, insurance policies, old contracts, and other things. These had been stuck in the closet at various times, usually in well-marked boxes or envelopes.

Over the following few days, I went through this box and sorted things out based on what I felt we needed to keep in hard copy form (insurance policies, for example), what needed to be scanned onto our computer and then disposed of (bank statements, for one), and what could just be tossed immediately (junk mail).

As I went along, I separated the documents to be disposed of into two groups: ones with key personal identification on them and ones without such identification.