please empty your brain below
I bought mine around the same time shortly after we'd moved in, albeit a secondhand one, for similar usage as yourself. It's still going strong despite many of the label holders now having snapped off and I never bothered replacing them, making looking for items increasingly more difficult despite my original attempt at alphabetical order. (I love your calligraphy BTW; I could never be so patient.)

Every so often I'll too have a shredding purge although as you say some items are worth keeping for reminiscing purposes e.g. old pay slips.

Tim | 25.04.25 - 7:34 a.m. | #

A great example of how much cars depreciate in value amongst that treasure trove.

gruntbuggly | 25.04.25 - 7:35 a.m. | #

My files live in folders held in plastic boxes, separated by category (taxes, banking, utilities, work, etc.). They are kept underneath the TV, out of sight behind the door of the cabinet the TV sits on.

I have become more ruthless of late, judging a piece of paper on its worth to keep, and more likely then not, most of them end up in bin of my shredder, which I then deploy when full.

I was surprised recently to read that the local council (LBHF) says I shouldn't put my shredding into the recycling, which I have been doing for years.

Greg | 25.04.25 - 7:54 a.m. | #

I got my two drawer filing cabinet from The Pier (home decor and gift shop) when they closed down for £25. It was their back office cabinet, so came with hundreds of empty plain green drop files labelled for each month going back give years.

Unfortunately, it is now very full. I kicked the football down the road a bit by switching to plastic drop files which can hold more paper, so I didn't need to divide the bulging and tearing files up (which would have compelled me to do a purge then). I still have to remove a few files every time I want to find something near the back though.

I'm sure I'll feel very proud when I eventually do the purge, but I'll probably try to put it off for another year if I can.

Peter of London | 25.04.25 - 8:26 a.m. | #

It's the nostalgia that makes it tricky.

I only keep 12 months of hard copy bank statements, but have a full digital extract back to age 16. So removing 13 months' ago when the next arrives is easy.

But now I have to work out which childhood artworks to keep for my 5 year old, and that's a much harder set of decisions.

TomH | 25.04.25 - 8:28 a.m. | #

If only cars devalued that much now. We bought a 3.5yr old car last year that was still worth a good 65% of its MSRP. Ouch. One time a car that old was worth maybe 40%.

On being paper free with places that will accept bills as ID - although they insist it muct be an original, I find if you own a colour laser printer they'll never know the difference. Do be careful with your headers and footers.

Chz | 25.04.25 - 8:37 a.m. | #

Ah, I'm going through this process currently. There remains a copy of the current Council Tax bill, which I had to print off myself, for those odd times when it's needed for proof of address. This lives in a locked fire box along with passports and important certificates. There are manuals for stuff in the house (bet many of those are available as downloads now), but otherwise, everything else is being shredded, after being scanned and digitally filed if it's really necessary. I reason that this is the only way to preserve some of the old and fading stuff anyway. Sat and created 4 large sacks of shredding last week. It's actually felt quite liberating and cathartic.

Pamela | Homepage | 25.04.25 - 8:59 a.m. | #

I spent several hours yesterday manually shredding bank statements for the years 2012 to 2015. ( I kept one from each year just in case.)
Bank statements which seem so dry and dull are such memory joggers

ganching | Homepage | 25.04.25 - 9:23 a.m. | #

I initially kept every payslip, so it became harder to chuck them as time went on. Eventually I was printing a hard copy when my workplace went paperless, and now retired I do have a complete record of my lifetime's pay, starting at £178 (in cash!) for my first 4 weeks in 1979.
Concert tickets were much easier not to accumulate as many venues either wouldn't let you keep them or didn't do tickets at all (even The Marquee was just raffle tickets I think). I now do wish I'd kept what I could though.

Andrew S | 25.04.25 - 9:42 a.m. | #

I have a terrible fear that chucking out what ought to go but may prove a mistake in years to come. A lot of my original employment details from 1969 went in the 1990s thinking I'd never need that again, but that was joining BOAC (now buried inside British Airways) and unique ephemera went with that, including one irreplaceable official group photo...

Anything ripe for chucking - recycling - shredding now goes through mental agonies of 'will this prove to be a mistake?' Space can only be used once and when things can't be left loose, something has to give. Last week was a massive load of potential future mistakes...

Joel | 25.04.25 - 9:51 a.m. | #

My paper electricity bills from EDF in France come with the message "Document à conserver 5 ans" clearly encouraging hoarding. I believe the general tax advice in the UK is keep all paperwork for 7 years.

ap | 25.04.25 - 10:00 a.m. | #

I scan and shred most stuff other than junk mail. As well as saving space, it has the benefit of making the whole lot searchable.

Tim W. | 25.04.25 - 10:32 a.m. | #

A recent week with broadband down was a reminder of why it’s still worth having paper copies of certain things — including, not least, contract and account details and all possible phone numbers for, er, your broadband supplier. Years as a freelance led me to keep (maybe too much) paper for my accountant and HMRC, but also showed that the “paperless office” is a myth; now we just print out what used to come, ready-printed, by post. My filing cabinet is well overdue for a cull.

Labourer | 25.04.25 - 10:37 a.m. | #

My filing cabinet desperately needs a cull. It's tedious though, and my personal shredder overheats after a few sheets, unlike office ones which can get through reams of documents!

Mikey C | 25.04.25 - 10:46 a.m. | #

We downsized 3 years ago and I got rid of a mountain of paperwork and the filing cabinet. So far, I've not had cause to regret it.

Peter (of Cambridge) | 25.04.25 - 11:16 a.m. | #

I'm not a paper saver, but around 10 years ago was extremely grateful that my father was when it helped make a sticky situation less expensive.

Cornish Cockney | 25.04.25 - 11:30 a.m. | #

I'm hopeless with paperwork, always have and always will be! To try and keep me better at it, I scan letters and save them on my NAS drive, with another offsite secure backup just in case!

Simon | 25.04.25 - 12:05 p.m. | #

What's with all the shredding? Shredding breaks the paper fibres and weakens the recycled product (if it can be recycled at all). If you really think someone is going to root around in your recycling bin/sack for 20-year-old bank statements or utility bills, put out the bin/sack just before the recycling crew arrive.

Hugh | 25.04.25 - 1:25 p.m. | #

I’m still always surprised by the thought of you having a driving licence and driving anywhere. As for the filing cabinet in your bedroom, that surprises me less!

Mr Peebly | 25.04.25 - 1:34 p.m. | #

I used to keep all these sorts of things, and had a large metal filing cabinet similar to yours. But in the last couple of years I suddenly started paring it down to essentials and now I'm keeping most stuff digitally and getting rid of paper copies. Could it all accidentally be deleted one day? Maybe. Could my flat burn down so I lose the paper copies. Also, maybe. I may miss some things for sentimental reasons, but I am quite enjoying the space it frees up for what I use every day. I still deliberate far too long before disposing of them though.

Anders | 25.04.25 - 1:35 p.m. | #

As I get to an age when I don't know whether my mother or I will survive longest, I worry how either of us could make head or tail of anything without clues on such bits of paper. I am currently content to rely on interwebby stuff for my own use, but it will disappear if I am not around to fiddle around with it.

kev | 25.04.25 - 2:05 p.m. | #

I went through a sorting and shredding exercise when I moved house a few years ago, and now all new "paperwork" that arrives in the mail goes straight into the scanner, and most of it subsequently heads to the shredder.

I still have my filing cabinet, though these days it's mostly for instruction manuals and children's artwork.

Paul | 25.04.25 - 2:24 p.m. | #

I think it helps that you haven't moved house in a long time! I had to help get rid of a lot of seemingly worthless (but nostalgia-filled) paperwork for my parents when they had to move a couple of years ago. Wish we'd had the time to scan before shredding but what's gone is gone now... Your post, however, has given me the idea of gifting them a filing cabinet as they still get a lot of stuff in by post. Seems to be much easier to store than the plastic boxes they currently use.

matthieu1221 | 25.04.25 - 2:37 p.m. | #

Box files are the way to go.

Colin Whiting | 25.04.25 - 3:24 p.m. | #

Every company under the sun tries to convince you to go paperless. I would always decline.

If I was run over by a bus tomorrow, at least my family would have some physical evidence of savings/investments etc. Short of giving out all your passwords to other people( which they strongly advise you not to do) keeping paper records seems a sensible option.

Richard | 25.04.25 - 3:31 p.m. | #

Have folders and folders of paperwork like this - on rare occasions the urge to keep stuff that only has meaning for me/complete records is overridden by the need to offload stuff.

Going through said stuff I do wonder if there are any organisations/ archives that would be interested in complete sets of social/domestic records like this? I for example have a complete record of my education under the long defunct ILEA, as well as my further/higher education which might be of interest to those in the education field. Or maybe not, and it all goes in the recycling in the not too distant future.

Thanks to this post, I do now think I might have overpaid for my '99 Polo, 1 previous owner, when I bought it from a colleague for £5k in 2003. That car was my pride and joy, so thanks for that!

anon | 25.04.25 - 4:07 p.m. | #

My system was lever arch files for different things. A couple of years after I retired all payslips and work related stuff got binned. I also stopped keeping things like utility bills, I've put my probably misguided trust in their online records.
My record keeping is now a shoebox into which I throw car related stuff and benefits correspondence.

Caroline | 25.04.25 - 5:03 p.m. | #

Perhaps you have shifted the filing cabinet to clean behind it once in a while. Did your £3 Premium Bonds win before? That is good luck!

SJM | 25.04.25 - 5:09 p.m. | #

I have 30 years worth of paperwork from self employment stacked in a spare room along with a tall pile of 'work' diaries, mostly black but a few red and blue. I try and avoid looking at them as I find it depressing, if they were an art piece it would be entitled 'what a waste of time'

Anyoldname | 25.04.25 - 7:14 p.m. | #

Don't bin anything!
I too have 40 odd years of receipts, statements,etc filed away in order in various boxes from my time as a self employed tradesman.
I was regularly advised by my accountant to dispose of most of it but always resisted,probably for my own nostalgic reasons but also because I thought it may one day come in handy.
when the PPI scandal arose I submitted a claim after a casual conversation with an ex bank employee, based on the fact I still had c/c statements from the 80's until the present.
After an initial offer from the parent company, which had gone through several restructures but always remained a "high street name",I decided to take advice and eventually accepted a very agreeable windfall so don't bin anything !

BongoJoe | 25.04.25 - 8:50 p.m. | #

Years ago I decided to separate some important paper stuff from the envelopes, inserts etc. that came with them. I did this sat in an armchair, carefully placing the important stuff on one arm and the stuff that could go on the other. Having made great progress, I reached to my left and promptly tore in half a pile of paper share certificates! I still remember the panicy, fainty, sweaty feeling that ensued.

Frank F | 25.04.25 - 9:15 p.m. | #

I have the whole lot going back to 1988 in box files. I often think of chucking it but it's my data mine. Once every so often I produce details of something I bought 30 years ago for the sheer amusement of presenting such precise information to others.

NickW | 26.04.25 - 9:45 a.m. | #

My bank regularly encourages me to go paperless and I always resist. A credit card statement in the post is my reminder to pay; a credit card statement by e-mail will disappear off the bottom of the screen within a day or so and risks being missed.

Alan S | 26.04.25 - 2:40 p.m. | #











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