Shredding Accomplished!

December 19, 2007

Elephant Burgers
Shredding Update

Today I finished the pile of shredding I first wrote about October 19. Today is December 19. It took me that long to get through the pile.

I didn’t realize back then I had a small trash can nearly full of papers to shred. I was only looking at the stack growing on top of the shredder and on a box next to the trash can. Ironically, the trash can is from my first shredder, which I wore out with marathon shredding sessions.

I stuck to my plan pretty well. I didn’t shred once a month and keep going until the shredder overheated and stopped. Yes! That was my previous method.

The new plan was to shred 10 items each day and I pretty much followed it. Whenever I got a credit card application (Good grief! That was most of my shredding!) I would shred it that day. Even if I got 2 or 3 applications, I shredded them plus my 10 items.

Some days I didn’t shred, so on a subsequent day I might shred 15-20 things. I had to fight the temptation to keep going after so few things shredded.

For me, 10 (or so) was a good guideline, because it kept me from shredding and shredding to the point it became a huge task. I paced myself and re-learned the value of tending daily to recurring tasks. The pile disappeared, and I was not frustrated or stressed.

Posted in Elephant Burgers, Special Announcements, Zine 3: December 2007, Zines in 2007