Shredded, Ripped, Torn

...and I am not talking about my abs 7 months post baby #4 - but I wish I was.

What do you do with all the mail you get that has personal information on it? I never realized how much we get that qualifies for the shredder. Oh, and we have a shredder! But we also have a friend who had their 3 year old boys finger get caught in it a few years ago so I don't have it plugged in and I hide it in the basement. For the last six years I've been putting it into a box. When it outgrew the original box, I moved it to a larger box, and eventually into a 66 Qt clear plastic box with a lid. This box has been taunting me for years.

My last attempt to rid myself of it's evil gaze was last year. I lit a fire in the fire place and burned quite a bit of it, but then all the ashes started to accumulate and tried to escape. Not a good idea to burn straight paper in a fireplace that hasn't been cleaned in a looooong time. I don't want to clean it either, and I don't want to burn my house to the ground.... not yet.

Then there were periods when I would shuffle though it and weed out all the parts that didn't contain sensitive information. You know the envelopes and fine print that accompany the never ending credit card offers in the mail addressed to DrH. Then I started tearing the sensitive stuff off and putting it back in the box and the other half with non-sensitive material went straight to the recycling bin. Even with all my sorting, burning, ripping, and tearing... oh and sometimes shredding on the home shredder until it overheats, I still have a huge box of paper with our names, address, social security number, account numbers, etc on them.

I spent 3 hours yesterday and another 3 hours today sitting on the floor watching back to back episodes of Drop Dead Diva on Netflix (I highly recommend the series) while once again sorting. I decided that my time was far more valuable and needed to be focused on other pressing matters (like painting) so I am looking for a company that will take my junk and shred it!

I am certainly not going to pack it up and move it with me! What kind of crazy person does that? Technically I did, already once... but I will not do it again.

I am terrified of identify theft. And who better to target than some guy with "doctor" written all over his mail? Luckily the neighborhood we live in says "teacher", but still it only takes one mistake for someone to figure it out and ruin your life. I keep hearing commercials for Life-Lock and think, oh I should do that - but instead I keep clutching this big box.

What do you do with your "stuff"?