Shred It, Dude.

That’s right, grab your board and let’s hit some waves.

Oops, sorry—wrong tip. That’s for the Life’s Short, Why Bother? series. One sec, I just need to find the right tip under these stacks of papers… ah, here we are, shredding.

If you’re like most people, you’ve got piles of papers—receipts, bank statements, old checks and so on—in a drawer or box somewhere. Or perhaps they’re cluttering up every horizontal surface in your house. You can’t toss them—all that personal information is an ID thief’s dream—but you don’t want them cluttering up your life anymore either. What’s the answer?

Shred ‘em, dude. (Hence, the confusion with the other tip.) Invest in a small paper shredder and once a month or so, gather up all the financial documents you deem useless and grind them to bits. It’s really quite satisfying.