If you have been saving paperwork for 10, 20, 30 years—or even longer—you are definitely not alone. Basements, attics, garages, storage rooms, filing cabinets, and closets have a way of slowly filling up with old tax returns, bank statements, bills, medical records, business files, and documents you simply never got around to throwing away.
Then one day you look at all those boxes and ask the obvious question:
How do I safely get rid of decades of papers?
The good news is that it may be much easier than you think.
Start by Deciding What You Really Need to Keep
Before getting rid of everything, determine whether there are documents you are legally, financially, or personally required to retain. Certain tax, legal, property, business, and financial records may need to be kept for specific periods of time.
If you aren’t sure about a particular document, check with your accountant, attorney, financial advisor, or other appropriate professional before destroying it.
Once you know what can go, you can start tackling the pile.
Don’t Spend Weeks Feeding Papers Into a Home Shredder
A home shredder can be fine for a few documents at a time. It is a completely different story when you have 20, 50, or 100 boxes of old files.
Small shredders can overheat, jam, require constant emptying, and force you to spend hours removing staples, paper clips, folders, and other materials.
What looks like a weekend project can quickly turn into weeks of work.
If you have decades of paperwork, professional bulk document shredding is usually the easier solution.
You Don’t Have to Sort Every Piece of Paper
One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they need to go through every old box and separate sensitive documents from ordinary paperwork.
If you don’t need the documents anymore, consider shredding the entire contents.
Identity thieves aren’t only interested in Social Security numbers. Old documents can contain names, addresses, account information, signatures, medical information, employment records, dates of birth, financial information, and other details that shouldn’t end up in the trash or recycling bin.
When in doubt, shred it.
FileShred Can Come Directly to Your Home or Business
With FileShred, you don’t have to load decades of paperwork into your car and make multiple trips somewhere to dispose of it.
We come to you.
Our team can bring secure 96-gallon shredding bins to your location. Your documents are placed into the bins, moved to our mobile shredding truck, and destroyed right at your location.
You can even watch the shredding process.
Whether you have several boxes from a home office or an entire room filled with old business records, we can help.
Don’t Worry About Carrying All Those Boxes
Are your old files in the basement? Upstairs? In an attic, storage room, or another inconvenient location?
Tell us where they are.
FileShred does the work. Our team can remove the documents from where they are stored and bring them to the shredding truck. You don’t have to spend days carrying heavy boxes outside before we arrive.
That’s especially helpful when cleaning out a longtime family home, helping parents downsize, preparing for a move, closing an office, or clearing out years of business records.
No Need to Remove Staples and Paper Clips
Another benefit of professional shredding is that there is very little preparation required.
You generally don’t need to sit there removing staples, paper clips, binder clips, folders, envelopes, rubber bands, or other common office materials.
Put the files aside for shredding and let FileShred handle the rest.
Decades of Paper Can Disappear Surprisingly Fast
A mountain of paperwork may look overwhelming when you’re staring at it in your basement or storage room.
Industrial mobile shredding equipment is designed for large volumes of paper. A project that could take you weeks with a home shredder can often be completed remarkably quickly by a professional shredding service.
Best of all, your confidential documents are destroyed before our truck leaves your location.
After your service is completed, FileShred provides a Certificate of Destruction, and the shredded paper is recycled.
Cleaning Out a Home, Office, or Storage Area? Call FileShred
You spent decades accumulating those documents. Fortunately, you don’t need decades to get rid of them.
FileShred provides convenient one-time document shredding services for homes and businesses throughout Connecticut and the Springfield, Massachusetts area. We can handle everything from a few boxes to large quantities of stored business records.
We offer service Monday through Saturday, and appointments can often be scheduled quickly.
So if you’ve been putting off that basement, attic, garage, storage room, or office cleanout because you don’t know what to do with all the old paperwork, don’t let the size of the project stop you.
Call FileShred. We’ll come to you, do the heavy lifting, shred your documents at your location, and help you finally reclaim all that space.
FileShred — Shredding Made Easy.
