I like to think we made good progress today. The office is basically done; what’s left is stuff that needs to go elsewhere, not sorted or packed.

Then my daughter and I tackled a stack of boxes in the second floor hallway.  These had been stored in the laundry room until the hot water tank died, flooding the floor enough to damage a couple of them before I caught it and hit the shut off valve.  After cleaning up the mess and getting the tank replaced, they just never made it back into the laundry room.

I have discovered something about myself today.

Apparently, I never throw out bills.

Or notices.

Or bank statements.

Or receipts and newsletters and classroom materials or forms…

These boxes were still unpacked from our last move, when we went from a 3 bedroom townhouse to the 5 bedroom townhouse we are in now.  There was 6 of us at the time. Of all my moves, this one was the worst. We all got sick with colds and what should have taken a leisurely few days became a week that ended with us just throwing things into boxes and bins and dragging them over the half block to our new home.

We had a very large desk back then, and it would not fit with the new layout, so we passed it on.  The contents got thrown into boxes, but we never had a place to unpack them. So in the laundry room they sat, virtually untouched.

Until today.

As my daughter and I went through them, almost everything went into bins or bags for garbage, recycling, Goodwill or ReUse Centre. Oh, and the Eco-station. We seemed to collect old power and USB cables and cords.  Almost nothing was kept.

By far, the largest portion had to be shredded. I found old utility bills from before we moved into the Co-op. There were credit card statements for cards we haven’t had for years. Some of the utility bills were the first to encourage people Go! Online! to pay their bills.

I was even finding hand written prescriptions from 2003-2004, when we lived in another province.

And tax stuff that should have been shredded years ago.

The tax stuff made sense, but why did I keep all those classroom materials from when I taught crochet? I haven’t taught formal classes in over 5 years!  Class outlines. Sign up sheets. Pattern notes. Evaluation forms.

So. Much. Paper.

Some of it made sense to keep for a few years, and since they were in the boxes, there they stayed. But much of it, I don’t know why I kept them.  Shredding from just these 4 boxes filled about 5 garbage bags!  And there was still the stuff that went into recycling. Plus, this is after many, many more bags of shredded paper from the office and even some ground floor stuff.

As stressful as this move is becoming, finally slaying the paper monster is turning out to be a huge benefit.

The Re-farmer