Dispose those bill statements the proper way (Home Improvement Tip)

Lately I have been sorting through papers that I accumulated for years.  Those mostly were bill statement from credit cards, utilities, receipts and the like which I intentionally set aside for safekeeping and reference.  Also, since I sometimes have this guilt feeling if I throw paper incessantly, I just tossed most of my papers inside boxes until I find a good way of how to reduce, reuse and recycle them.  That became some sort of a habit but it seems like my plan of recycling had also been tossed inside those boxes for many years. 

Now what do I do with those loads of paper?  Even if I have a sagacious intention to hoard all of what I accumulated that could have otherwise been thrown away, I cannot anymore stand the clutter.  What a relief if I could construct a sturdy beautiful house out of those papers and make them as a living space.

The goal is to find a way on how I could get rid of those papers without self-reproach.  Burning the papers or using them for charcoal is an unwise option of course, lest I produce additional carbon emission.  I can’t re-use them either since there were print on both sides already and I also cannot sell them because there were personal information in it.  I have learned to be cautious nowadays when it comes to private document due to the growing incidence of identity theft and information stealing.

Now I got an additional goal of getting rid of those papers while protecting my confidential information from getting into the hands of people with wicked intention.  The only alternative I could think of was to tear them to pieces. Using scissors to do the job would be fine but that would take me a lot of time to finish so I was down to the option of shredding them.

After picking the better option on how I could reduce my paper garbage, I need to scout for a reliable paper shredder so I head out to the mall eager to find that one helpful gadget.  Paper shredder varies in sizes and purpose but since I only have kilos of paper and not tons of them I only need something small for personal use.  Electronic types would be very convenient to have but they are more costly ranging in price from P800 (about $16)  to P3,500 ($70) and since I am into serious business of reducing not just my expenses but also my carbon footprint, I prefer the manual type shredder that only costs less than five hundred pesos ($5) and doesn’t need electricity to be utilized.   So here is what I got …..

When my kids saw the paper shredder, they thought it was something they can play with but when I explained what it does and what was the goal behind the purchase they immediately look for their paper trash inside their school bags and volunteered to do the shredding themselves.  The paper shredder is fine to be used by small kids because it doesn’t have sharp metal blades in it.  My five-year old daughter really had a lot of fun doing it herself.  Isn’t it nice that I also found an effective way to teach my kids on how to be responsible for their paper trash?

As I never get to use my manual shredder as it was borrowed by friends and never found its way back to me, 😁 later on I also bought this electric-powered paper shredder from the same retailer that was a little pricey than the previous one....

...but I guess it was not worth the purchase as this easily broke down. 😞 So I would rather use my reliable manual shredder than this one. Once we are through shredding all those paper, what should we do next to reuse and recycle them?

The story doesn’t end here

reposted from 11.11.10