HAPPILY SHREDDING AWAY

Last night I was sitting in my Mom's office with her. My brother was there, too. My Mom was all excited how much better her room looked, but had to admit, that only my brother might see the difference. I was mean enough to say, the only difference I see is that the stuff on her second desk is stacked twice as high as the last time I was there a couple of months ago. Of course she got all defensive about it and then showed me a box that was sitting next to the shredder. She said:"Look. I threw away all of this. I just have to shred it still." What is it and why haven't you shredded it yet," I wondered. "Bank statements," was the answer and she kind of made it obvious that she changed her mind and might just keep them. I asked her how old they were. "Older then 7 years."

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE MONTH! I offered for the kids to help shred it. She didn't look all that convinced but I kind of made her feel she would be doing the kids a favor. I brought it up over dinner again and even though she still didn't seem to excited about it she didn't say no. So I happily ran off to shred the stuff with the kids. The oldest bank statement I came across was from 1972. Yup. Nineteenseventytwo. As in 42 years ago. It was way too much to shred it all at once. The shredder my Mom has is for home offices and not made for heavy duty.

Cruel me knows how hoarders tick. So I decided too make sure that if she changes her mind to make it as hard as possible to keep the stuff. I took all the statements out of the paper folders and shredded those first. This way they cannot be reused for anything plus if you want to keep the stuff now you have to find something to file them in first. Evil. I know. I restacked them neatly into the box, but in random order. I know I know. Downright vicious. Our output was a trashbag (medium size) full of shreds. I am quite happy with myself. Too bad I didn't know about this sooner. I could be done by now!