In every home around the world, there's that drawer, cabinet or box filled to overflowing with sensitive documents that no longer serve a purpose. Bills, receipts, bank statements—you name it, they're all there. Once they served as records that helped you to keep track of your daily dealings, but they almost always become useless when the time comes for you to move your business or home.
The problem with that lies in disposal. Even if you own a shredder, you might not have the time to sit around feeding page after page of paper into it. You have a move to arrange. However, you can't simply dump documents that hold the key to your very identity. That is inviting identity theft.
Luckily, there are several simple ways that you can dispose of sensitive documents without putting your identity at risk.
Use Your Lawnmower to Shred Them
This definitely beats the monotonous process of hand feeding documents through a shredder. Take your piles of unwanted but sensitive documents and scatter them across the lawn of your backyard. Then simply have at them with the lawnmower until the remnants are so unrecognizable that even a shredder might be put to shame.
Rake the pieces up and throw them in the bin. Just make sure that it is not going to be a windy day when you try this.
Soak and Compost Them
Tear up the documents, or shred them with the lawnmower, and add them to a refuse bag. Add some water to the shredded pieces and stir until the paper is adequately soggy. Leave the mess to soak for an hour, and voila—you have a soggy mess that can be added to either your own or a friend's compost bin.
Soak and Burn Them
If you have a large quantity of private documentation to dispose of, you can place it into a large container, such as your bathtub for instance, before adding water. Stir the mixture together, and then leave it overnight. The next morning, squeeze out as much water from the resulting mess as you can, and form the mush into an easily manageable chunk.
Leave the chunk of paper somewhere to dry for a few days, then later you can safely burn it in the barbecue area of your backyard without having to worry about loose pieces of burning paper scattering everywhere.
Mix Documents with Food Waste
If you have a little more time on your hands and don't fancy spending time on the above methods, simply dump your sensitive documents in with your organic waste. Identity thieves will think twice about sifting through papers that are covered in rotting food.
Find a Shredding Service for Large Quantities
For fairly large quantities of sensitive documents you can probably find a document destruction service near you. You can either transport the documents there yourself or have them come to your home and dispose of them under your watchful eye.
If you are hiring a rubbish disposal company to dispose of any waste before you vacate your current premises, you might also be able to enquire about document shredding services offered by them. However, you choose to dispose of your documents, always ensure that they are unrecognisable before you wash your hands of them.
Share15 February 2017
My husband says I'm little intense, but I like everything in the house to look good and match, even our garbage bins. I have recently redecorated the house and have changed the colour scheme to burnished metals and neutral stone colours from our previous beach themed home. Luckily, these days you can find garbage bins in just about any colour or texture, so even the fussiest of garbage bin owners can find something that matches their decor if they know where to look. This blog has some tips on finding attractive garbage bins in any colour, texture or pattern to match their home decor, along with how you can tell that the bins will suit your waste needs.