For many of us, 2021 wasn’t exactly what we anticipated. The lingering pandemic has extended work from home for many businesses as others are slowly reintegrating into an office a couple of times a week. We may have found ourselves working out of a home office longer than we thought and may potentially be doing so for the foreseeable future.
Working around these outside forces may have led to some office maintenance falling through the cracks. You may have physical documents piling up in your home office that would typically be off-site now, taking up precious space in your home. Perhaps your office is preparing for staff to be working on-site again and needs to organize sensitive documents.
So what are some tips for organizing your documents?
What Should I Be Shredding?
You likely have quite a few documents that you could shred right now for your personal and business accounts. Any documents or statements that include bank account numbers, your social security number or tax ID, or any notes with passwords, pins, and so forth. The whole reason you’re shredding documents in the first place is to protect yourself and those whose sensitive information is located on those documents from identity theft. If you have documents that don't expose that kind of information that are just taking up space in your office, you can recycle those as they don’t require that level of destruction.
When Is Shredding Not a Good Idea?
There’s a list of documents that you do need to keep handy for a while, for several years even, before you can discard them. In some cases, there are also documents you will never want to discard. Those tend to be the documents you would assume, such as birth and death certificates, social security cards, and marriage certificates.
You can shred many of your more sensitive documents after seven years. That said, it’s recommended that you never part with your tax returns. However, you don’t need to keep your pay stubs after filing with your W-2.
Storage Quarters Is Your One-Stop Destination for Document Security
Storage Quarters has over 35 years of experience servicing the Long Island and greater New York City area working with businesses of all sizes. Whether working from home or working at an office, Storage Quarters has many services designed to declutter your office and keep your information safe and secure. Using our professional shredding services and off-site storage units, the documents you should hold on to but don’t need immediate access to are kept secure through document scanning and secure digital storage.
Our professional shredding services include mobile shredding units where you can schedule recurring visits or have one of our destruction consoles on-site that we’ll come by and empty once a month. Regardless of which shredding option you choose, you’ll receive a Certificate of Destruction for peace of mind and legal protection.
Live clutter-free with our wide range of storage solutions. Contact the document management specialists at Storage Quarters by phone or email us to obtain a free quote on our available services to help your business.