Need some advice here. I have a lot of crap (paperwork, bills, books, notes etc) that I've accumulated since I went to med school ten years ago. Since moving back home to Brum, I've spent various weekends trying to throw away a lot of this stuff. Most recently, I've destroyed (ie shredded via criss-cross shredder) everything pertaining to the first couple of years of training. I'm now considering what to do about the last three years of specialty training.

Amongst all of this, I have various bills and letters that I previously kept. These are the ones causing me issue. I have amazon invoices for all purchases in the last five years. I have water/leccy/council/gas bills etc from when I used to rent. I have all bills for my 3G dongle that I bought from T-mobile and used for 12 months. I have the rental agreements from when I used to rent - both as doctor and as student. I still have my bank statements from when my parents opened my Natwest account right until around 2005-6, when I started using online banking instead and stopped paper statements.

Given that I've not needed to look at some of them in the last 3-4 years, is it worth destroying them? Alternatively, I could just put them into storage but is it worth doing so? Main advantages would be less clutter/more storage at home; main disadvantage would be space used in storing them.

You are meant to keep records for 7 years but much will be duplicated. Now if you had them scanned in so have backups on the computer you can probably destroy them. It might be best to file them so that you can destroy them en masse in x years time. So anything in a file marked 2005 or earlier could be destroyed without much problem. The real problem is what will you do if you discover that you need the information. Is it filed on the computer. For example electricity bills can be destroyed earlier if all the information is stored in an account program so that you know the details of that bill.

With some, would the provider's online record not be good enough? For example, Amazon will show you a record of items you've bought going back over 10 years (assuming you have any) so there's really no need to keep the pieces of paper if you're short of room.

Jon

Amazon is fine - happy to destroy. WRT bills, I never bothered with online accounts because I was only renting for twelve months at a time and would have to close/open accounts every year.

Think I'll sort and appropriately file them.

Thanks

With bank stuff I had all my statements stopped and I use e-statements instead.

Other stuff I tend to keep for a year, and then throw out.

The only thing I keep longer than a year are my P60s and P45s. I keep these for four years (the repayment deadline for previous tax years is four years, so HMRC won't be asking for them beyond four years).

What I do:

I shred mine and then mix it in with a giant sack of recycling and then take it to the biggest mixed recycling skip there is. It makes it very hard for any identity thief to get enough pieces when it is mixed as much as that.

I put mine in the bin when it arrives. If anyone wants my credit history they're welcome to it. Credit cards with £200 limits and 2000% apr abound.

Similar when we finish with the BBQ.

I shred then add to bags of cat crap when I throw it out.

If someone is willing to piece together bits of paper from amongst recycled paper cat litter mixed with cat piss and poop then fair play to them.

Yes but some are.