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Since When Did Simple Shredding Become So . . . Complicated?

The good news is, we have finally got to a point in our adult lives that we are able to hire real, live housecleaning professionals. The bad news is, on their very first visit (in their eternal efficiency,) they took away my big pile of “sensitive” documents which I have been accumulating for six months with every intention of sitting down and shredding at some point!

If it’s important enough to accumulate it’s important enough to shred out of existence . . . yet I always put off my shredding until it becomes almost impossible to manage with my one simple home shredder that jams and starts to overheat after I get impatient and put ten sheets in after just five minutes with literally an hour or more to go because I have let it accumulate for so long!

I can’t shake my gut feeling that they have done me a huge favor. Yet I’m in a panic!

The office is spotless, just like the house, and it feels amazing. And in one fell swoop they removed a huge time-consuming, forever-on-my-to-do-list-yet-just-can’t-seem-to-do-it, task. But. . . what if someone digs through the garbage and gets a hold of, say, my name and address? Or whatever it is that arrives in the mail nowadays which I faithfully keep out of the recycle bin in the name of my personal security. This is to the point where I rip off the name and address of every single thing that arrives in the mail, junk mail included. I even rip the labels off of every single package that arrives! Any shred (ok, pun intended) of identifying evidence goes into a forever-growing pile that ensures I am maintaining my vigilance against those out to take advantage of any lapses in my personal security protocol!

It’s actually really exhausting and time consuming . . .

As far as I know my personal security has never been compromised via the US Postal Service. Online however, that’s another story, as I’m sure my information has been stolen, sold, sold again, stolen some more, compromised and compromised again based on warning emails about changing usernames and passwords from some company or another that arrive periodically. My password manager has over 300 individual logins representing websites that have my information! Which could be hacked into at any point. And here I am freaking out over a pile of papers that probably nobody would look twice at.

Or would they? It did cross my mind that I should maybe try and retrieve those papers from the house cleaners. “Hi, can I look through the garbage bag please?” Yikes!!

I guess it doesn’t matter in the long run. My shredding pile is one of many projects that are sitting there on my to-do list, waiting to be accomplished. I’m old enough and wise enough now to understand that I may never accomplish most of these projects. But simply by being on my to-do list, those “projects” are sapping my energy and the areas of my life that I really need to put my god-given precious time and effort into. So, I will not be calling my housecleaning people to try and retrieve that stack of papers. Let it go, I keep telling myself.

Which means, I guess I have one less thing on that long to-do list, but only if I can let go of my fear that my information will be compromised. If I can’t control it, I can’t worry about it any longer. It’s out of my hands. Worrying, done!

Wow, I feel liberated!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go sort my mail to ensure that I separate the recycle parts from any sensitive information . . .

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