Stygian

Best of luck with this plan. One thing that will help is a good paper shredder. Get one that cross cuts, it's better security than just tossing stuff.

That's a good idea. I keep forgetting to buy one. So far, I managed to fill blue bin with papers and junk recyclables. Much to my surprise, I was reacquainted with my long lost 3-hole hole punch, three packs of cards, several binders with blank pages, and a whole bunch of random computer/electronic cords. Pretty much most of my findings are just junk. I found countless pay stubs, some over a decade old, from all my working years until now. I may need to join a document hoarder support group lol

I had that problem too. Bought a cheap shredder from Walmart. I should have bought a better one because I had killed the shredder before I was done shredding. I'm on my 3rd one now.

Like MzSnowleopard said, buy a good shredder. I used to work in an office supply store, trust me, there's a quality difference between cheap and mid-grade.
And I hope you have a good supply of boxes for your unwanted items. Please donate everything that can be used by someone else. I have a sister-in-law that just throws items away. Drives me nuts.

I've honestly never looked into what makes one good or bad. I always assumed it has such a simple function that even low quality ones will suffice without breaking down. I'll have to look into it further.

For sure, anything that is reusable I plan to donate. My first hoarder cove has mostly documents, my next room has mostly misc junk. All the boxes from the documents will go to holding the things I plan to drop off at a Salvation Army. I hear it's the best place to drop things off since the money doesn't go to CEO bonuses like other thrift store chains.

A middle grade one should be fine. How much you have to shred is a factor. If shred continuously, as in one sitting, feeding pages after pages you risk burning out the engine.

Well, I'm jumping in here about 6 weeks later, but am amused at your story. Interested in hearing how it all turned out. One tid-bit of advice for keeping your paperwork tidy, if you have papers that you need to keep, consider scanning them and keeping the scanned copy on a memory stick, or "cloud" and then ditch the paper copy if all you need is a copy of it. This keeps your filing cabinet and boxes empty. That's what I do. I live where it is nice and warm, but my family is in the colder states and I grew up there so I totally relate to your blogs about the Spring this year. It was quite perplexing as to just when was Spring coming. Thanks for the story and I hope you are now enjoying your brew room.

For the most part, the operation was successful. Work and other obligations kept draining my motivation, so I still haven't driven down to a salvation army to donate my stuff.

On the bright side, my two beers turned out amazing, and my wines are ready for racking into smaller containers. It's the last stage prior to adding potassium sorbate (stops yeast activity) and bottling. I'll mix 5 gal of pinot noir and malbec and rack them into 1 gal containers with dark cherries and blackberries. I'll add cloves to 1 gal, just to see what spiced wine tastes like (spiced mead is awesome), and I'll do a 50/50 blend. The rest of the wine I will just rack back into a glass carboy to finalize the aging before bottling. I also just started my cider a couple days ago, I added extra sugar and real apple juice to the kit concentrate. Should yield a potent brew with a beer style finish carbonation.

Good call on the scanner. I bought one a year ago, and it's been very handy with documents that needed to be sent back and forth. I could cloud save a lot of documents that aren't critical. Not sure I want to scan my house ownership papers lol