Do you ever get the urge to purge? Well, I’ve got the urge, and my file drawers full of paper are headed to the bonfire.
External forces have gotten to me. My office is moving to a new building in a few months and everyone is working hard to get rid of unnecessary paper. On top of that, my husband is doing a major basement clean-up and discovering boxes of old records. He even found my first checkbook register, from my teenage years. I made detailed teenage girl notes to declare how huge and significant my tiny part-time job deposits were. I guess I was pretty proud when I earned my own money.
So what do we do with all these old files and records and forms? I want to get rid of it all, but I know I have to hang on to some of it, so I looked it up.
Some things you can get rid of right away, like salary statements (after checking against your annual W-2 form), canceled checks that you don’t need for tax purposes, expired warranties, and expired coupons. This is going to be a big pile of paper. A lot of these documents contain personal information, so I’ll protect my privacy and destroy records that contain personal information, not just throw them in the trash.
Some things you have to keep forever, and should be stored in a safe deposit box. These items include birth certificates, citizenship papers, marriage certificates, adoption papers, divorce decrees, wills, death certificates, deeds, car titles, household inventory, veteran’s papers, bonds and stock certificates, and important contracts.
Then there are all the documents you should keep for a while, but not forever. The rules for storing documents like bank statements, tax returns, and receipts vary. Look at this list for advice on how long to store documents.
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