I’m sure that I rambled on about BOXES in my July entries. We decided that we would hire one of those shredding trucks to come and destroy out of date documents. We hired a youth group to bring the boxes upstairs, and then Dear Husband and I started going through the boxes.
DH separated all the pages from the binders. When he was done there was a line eight feet long of empty binders, with more binders starting a second level. I don’t think we will need to buy binders again.
While Dear Husband worked on the binders, I started going through my mothers papers. The dirt was incredible. I’m sure there was dirt left from Missouri, her previous home, about 25 years ago! We had checks and registers going back to 1982. Once those were done, I cleared out our personal papers, which was a little bit easier. I save more than I should, but I organize it in a way that makes it easy to separate the important things from the trash.
I developed a system moving things out of one box, removing paper clips, mementos and anything that couldn’t go through the shredder. I spent one Saturday sorting through the boxes at the speed of light, watching reruns of CSI:NY. When I finished the personal papers I moved on to the company documents.
Ultimately, we had forty seven boxes lined up along the back side of the fireplace in the foyer.

I even found things in the office that could go, staying up one night to be sure that everything that needed to be shredded was ready to go. Of course, the shredder came a week later, and I had to wait all day for him to show up.
Still, it’s such a relief that we have started getting this cleaned up. Now I need to use the shop vac that I borrowed from My-Sister-The-Nurse, so that I can get it back to her. No more being a sloth for me!