Three bags of shreddies

Well, shreddings. Three large garbage bags full, ready for recycling. I have wanted to tackle our filing cabinet ever since we moved and I finally got the kick-start I needed.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an item over at Uncluttterer on the FreedomFiler. It's essentially a system for managing household and/or small business files that is self-purging. I ordered the smallest kit that just comes with labels and instructions as I already had hanging file folders and a cabinet.

It arrived on Thursday and by midday Friday, our living room was awash in piles of paper to recycle, paper to shred and THEN recycle, old labels to throw away, and dust. By mid-afternoon today, I had two thirds of the cabinet purged, the shredding bags out on the back porch, the carpet vacuumed, and a basic system in place to manage our files.

I got rid of 10 years of tax returns, 6 years of bank statements and bills, pay stubs, immigration paperwork, user manuals and warranties for things we no longer own, etc, etc. It feels incredibly freeing to have all this empty space in the cabinet and to be able to locate important papers quickly without pawing through piles of out-of-date stuff.

I still have health records and the boys school and sports files to go through. Plus Z will have to deal with some of his bulging files full of financial and work stuff, old papers written in Arabic, and yellowing photographs from his childhood.

My ultimate goal is to get rid of our existing three drawer lateral cabinet because it's in our living room, is not attractive, and takes up too much space. There is simply nowhere else in the house to put it. I think I can get down to half the cabinet, which could then fit into a three-drawer standard filing cabinet that could be stashed somewhere unobtrusive. Or stored in some kind of attractive desk-type furniture thingy (maybe like this or this) in the study part of our living room.