Saturday, January 3, 2015

In The Back of the Filing Cabinet

In the back of the bottom drawer of black filing cabinet, I found a dark blue box. I almost literally could not see it in there. It just blended in. Inside that dark blue box I found cancelled checks from 2003 and maybe 25-30 check registers dating back to at least 1989!!

Do you see the blue box back there? Really it is there.
I first went through the stack of checks to see if any looked they should be saved. The answer was no thankfully. Into the shredder and done in less than 2 minutes!

Look. Organized clutter!!
Next, I started looking at the check registers. I think I saved these because I didn't save the older checks. I shredded those quite some time ago. Probably sometime before our last move. I did look through some of them for my own amusement. Once I did that I had a tiny desire to save them. However, logically, I knew I would never need to know any of the information in them and they would only be for entertainment. And how often, would I think instead of a movie, I'll get out my old check registers? Ha! Never. I shredded them too. Maybe they didn't NEED to be shredded, but I did it anyway.

At this point I joked with my daughter that all the shredded checks and registers took up more space now. There was no way I could get it all back into the little box! I'm sending the cute little box to Goodwill, as I don't know of a need for it now. Someone who is in the collecting stage of their life might like it.



After the check and register purge, I felt really grateful that banks don't return checks any longer!! I may never have a large pile of checks to shred again. I now record all of our checking account transactions on an Excel sheet, so no paper registers will likely accumulate in physical form again either. Amazing!

Do you know what is lurking in the back of your file cabinet? Have you discovered anything pushed back that was nearly invisible? Do you have any cancelled checks or registers in your home? Or am I the last one?

3 comments:

  1. We haven't got a filing cabinet. I've never really used cheques. The last one I wrote was in 2009 to pay our wedding photographer. If I remember right, shops stopped accepting them before that.

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  2. Oh yes, this is the story of my life, and mostly with strange things that make me go "why in the world did I save that?!". I don't use checks, so I don't have that issue, but I do still have my copy of the cashiers check I used for an apartment deposit...from January 2010...that has no longer had my name on the lease since 2012...maybe it's time for it to go!

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    Replies
    1. Is it the same apartment that you live in? Will you need proof of paid deposit amount when you do vacate? If you don't live there, and got your deposit back then I don't think you need to keep!

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