Downsized One Folder

I cleaned close to an inch thickness from the family folder called "Dental." In the front of the folder are the insurance information, pamphlets from the dental office, and invoices from the last year that cover more than one family member. Then, each family member's records begin with a brightly colored piece of paper. Each person has a different color. There's no tab to find these pages, but the bright colors show up easily. Each person's records now include any statements that mention procedures that were done. I keep health records back as far as possible.

I threw away the paperwork from all appointments that didn't involve a procedure, ie, some important dental history.

After going through every paper in the file, there was a pile of garbage on the floor, but there was one more task to do!

I had to choose between shredding everything or sorting through the garbage pile and just shredding the pages with personal information on them. My shredder takes only 8 pages at a time, makes a lot of noise, and is a mess to clean out. So I sorted!

All the insurance claims and statements with personal information such as social security numbers are getting shredded!

The rest of the garbage, which did have names, addresses, and some dental history, went into the kitchen garbage with the coffee grounds and vegetable trimmings. That's my little way of discouraging identity theft. If you want to know TMI about me, it will involve knowing what I didn't eat!