It being Dr. King's day and all, which luckily means that I don't have any work responsibilities today, I decided to honor the great man's legacy by embarking upon my latest household project: shredding the 11 years' worth of papers that fill various cabinets and boxes in my storage room.
(I ordered a "ID Guard" 6-sheet shredder from Staples a couple weeks ago for this very purpose, but somehow I've always had something more interesting to do [like readying my WoW characters for the expansion, which goes on sale at midnight tonight], and the mountains of papers, while pretty well organized by account/creditor/purpose, are intimidating for no other reason than their sheer size.)
So I grabbed a few folders' worth of credit card bills and bank account statements from the late 90s. It turns out that I bought a pretty shitty shredder, cos every 5 minutes or so I got a paper jam. Okay, I might have been trying to shove too much paper through at once, or stuffing it in crookedly, but come on. Whenever there was a jam I had to back the paper out, which caused clouds of shreds and fragments to spew out in every direction. I can't wait to sweep the hardwood floors now.
So yeah, I was bored within the first half hour and decided that I'd have to break this project into (many) stages. I figure if I do 15 minutes of shredding per day, the last folder will be done sometime this summer. At least the impact on the recycling bin will be minimal. I'm sure Eric and Lesa will thank me for that.
There was one positive aspect to the endeavor. As I stacked, sorted, and removed staples (yea, my POS shredder can't handle them), I got the occasional glance at the contents of the papers. It turns out that old credit card and bank account statements, and the random accompanying documents like letters from bank officers, are wonderful records of life history. They immediately dredge up long forgotten memories, like the day I stopped into the bookstore on Acland St in Melbourne and bought an Elvis Costello cd and a biography of Ned Kelly before having a bowl of chips at the hip gay lunch spot Jackie O. Weird how those little details are tucked away in little drawers in the back of your brain waiting to be summoned up by the fulfillment of random household chores.
