Paper Hoarder

I am a paper hoarder. Generally I pride myself on not hoarding anything. We regularly purge the toys, and books, and computer paraphernalia. I collect the kids' art throughout the year, and then photograph it all for a photo book and throw it away. Yay for me. As it turns out, I hoard paper. Records, receipts, statements, you name it, if its on paper, I hoard it.

I've been converting us to being as paperless as possible lately. Particularly in our bills and household paperwork areas. The husband bought me a new laserjet printer which is awesome AND a Fuji ScanSnap iX500 which is even more awesome. So I've been bringing up our paper files from the basement file cabinet, up to the desk, sorting and scanning. Deciding to scan and keep only 2 years of past bills (water, gas,electric etc) meant I threw away PILES of paper. We bought a new car yesterday (traded in a less-new angry-making car) and when I was looking for the service papers on it, just in case they wanted it or found it helpful, I came across receipts I had kept for our old cars. Specifically a receipt (tires I think?) from 1999 for my 1988 Plymouth Horizon. As well as a receipt from the husbands 1989? Firebird (also tires I think). Those cars are...like three cars ago for us. Why would I still have these papers? So I am enjoying even more all the sorting and scanning and throwing away (shredding) of all this paper. It's super fun because I like the organizational aspects of it, and because its cleaning without using any real elbow grease.

I have some pictures of the file cabinet and my terrible bill organizer on the desk as well as the piles of paper I'm creating for shredding. I'll post about it again, with pictures, when I get through it all.

Hello. My name is Melissa and I WAS a paper hoarder.