Homeowners: Know When to Hire a Shredding Company
Need to clean up your personal documents? Don’t just throw them in the trash. Here’s why homeowners should rely on professional mobile shredding services!
Homeowners need to shred sensitive documents for the same reasons businesses do: to protect identity and sensitive information by way of document destruction, rendering information useless.
Think about it this way: paper shredding is another measure of protecting your family. While decluttering is a cathartic and necessary process to keeping homes clean, tossing sensitive documents in the trash opens residential customers to identity theft. Once trash is left at the curb, it is considered public property, which means wrongdoers and thieves can easily rummage through trash bags to take what they need to open a credit card in your name, take advantage of your health insurance information, or use your social security card to wreak havoc in other ways.
When is it time to hire a shredding company for your home documents? If the following have met their retention period, then your best course of action is to hire a mobile shredding service to ensure total destruction.
After one year, medical bills, paycheck stubs, utility bills, and credit card statements should be properly destroyed, not put in the trash. One exception to this rule is your utility bill; if you write-off your utilities as part of a home office expense, then keep utility bills with your tax filings for 3 years.
Documents such as records of loans that are paid off can be shredded, but other documentation that supports a fulfilled loan should be filed indefinitely. Other documents like credit card bills can be shredded once you’ve verified the purchases.
Old medical files, such as lab results and doctor’s notes that are no longer needed should also be shredded, as these documents contain identifying information that could be used if fallen into the wrong hands.
Other documents to shred include junk mail, such as pre-approved credit offers and applications, as well as expired debit and credit cards, credit card receipts, credit reports and histories, ATM receipts, and canceled checks.
This is just a short list of home documents that could add up quickly and create unnecessary clutter if not dealt with properly.
With professional home shredding, you get complete protection of information, compliance with government regulations and document destruction laws, prevention of information and identity theft, and saved space, time, and money.
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