Oops! I may have misquoted the price. The only place I found it mentioned, Office Depot charges 99 cents per pound. I had misremembered it as ten cents. It’s after hours on Sunday, so I can’t call 'em and ask.
Do you have any friends who have a fireplace or a BBQ?
In any case, the “sump” or “liquidation” process has worked for me in the past, although I only used it for smaller amounts, not the number of big boxes you’ve spoken of.
I am guessing it would take you a fairly long time to “reduce” the papers, cutting out only the relevant parts that contain private information, but leaving aside the non-detailed “boilerplate” parts. If you could do that, you might reduce the overall volume significantly. (You’ve doubtless already thought of this… Never mind!)
Have you checked to see if your county or city offers free shredding events? Where I live the county holds one once a month in different areas of town.
What are the odds that if you put them in a giant trash sack and throw them in the regular garbage a would be criminal is going to find them and use them?
If you were throwing out papers on a regular basis, I’d get the concern. But a one time deal? Nah.
This.
Also, one of the local TVstations (NBC affialiate) sponsors one every month or three.
If you can get them in the car, they’ll do the rest; just pull into the designated parking lot where they have commercial shredding trucks.
I just thought of something. I have a field near my house. I also happen to have a DR brush mower. What if I spread the stuff out there and run it over with the mower. It should turn into mulch. Do you think that would work?
R. P. McMurphy: wouldn’t there be a likelihood of a blizzard of paper scraps, blowing all over the neighborhood? The folks next door might not admire this strategy.
Is the field available for burning? We’re coming up to the wet season, at least in the northern hemisphere, and burning permits are more easily obtained. You’d have to be VERY careful to contain the paper somehow, so burning sheets don’t rise up on thermal updrafts to menace the eaves of neighbors’ houses, but if the bundles of paper were properly weighted down, you could burn 'em outdoors. A nice Hallowe’en bonfire!
Here’s what I’m thinking (after pondering this further). Rent or borrow a small wood chipper. Stand near it with a garden hose. Start it up, feet the documents into it and while the shreds come out douse them with a garden hose so the stuff doesn’t fly all over. Use the stuff as mulch.
Now I haven’t tried this but I might. Tell me what might go wrong.
Back to the original suggestion, I happen to have a field with no neighbors nearby but I realize that isn’t a normal situation. But, if you have a bit of lawn space I’m thinking that my suggestion in this post might work. It can’t cost too much to rent a small wood chipper for an hour or two. Also, when you spread the shred on your flower beds you might be amazed at how great the blooms look next spring.
You can certainly feed a wood chipper much faster than a shredder and it won’t burn out on you.
If I test this I will tell you how well it worked.
I’ve never found shredding that big of a deal. Buy a good one and it will last many years. It can take awhile to go through a backlog of paper. Spend one hour a day, for two weeks. You’ll be amazed at how many boxes of paper are gone.
My only complaint is the paper dust that accumulates on the floor beside the shredder. Always vacuuming that up after shredding a stack of paper.
If the documents are laser printed (some of them are bound to be), bleach won’t do a lot to the printing, because the ‘ink’ is fairly inert - made from plastics and carbon black, or similar.
Besides, dumping it in the bath and soaking it with chemicals just means you then have a huge, wet chemical disposal problem, and more than likely, a significant cleaning job getting the bath usable again.
That was my first thought too - how are you going to clean all that sticky paper goo off the tub? Wet paper is like glue!
Buy a decent shredder. Sit in the living room with it and a box of paper, put the TV on, and shred during commercials. You aren’t likely to overheat it that way, and you’ll get through the backlog pretty quickly. Plus then you’ll have a shredder handy to prevent a backlog like this from happening again.
I put all our old papers into a big plastic bin outside, added water to soak, then used a big long 1" wood drill to bore holes through the paper. I left it overnight, then used a paint stirrer attachment on the drill to turn the whole lot into pulp. Drain and dump.
So far, it sounds like one way or another, you’re going to invest a lot of time:
either mixing chemical mush and then disposing of it, or
feeding papers 5 sheets at a time into a noisy shredder at home, or
driving across the city looking for a commercial shredder.
But there’s a way you can get rid of the stuff just by sitting easy at home:
Find out what time the garbage truck passes your house. Toss all the papers in your household trash can 15 minutes before the truck comes, and just watch the can to make sure it gets emptied into the truck. Then watch the truck for 5 minutes to make sure it adds more garbage from your neighbors. Once your stuff is buried and mixed in with a couple tons of garbage–and on their way to a landfill with mountains of more garbage-- your old check stubs aren’t in any(realistic) danger of being stolen.
(For added security, as you put your papers in garbage bags, top off each bag by pouring real garbage into it before you tie it closed and put it in the collection bin. Old coffee grounds should work well.)
This probably isn’t a practical solution for the OP, but nearly all of my secure document shredding is done by a pair of gerbils. They will reduce any paper or card to very small flakes in a short time - I then compost the shredded material (which works very well, owing to its fine texture and large surface area)
In the past I’ve mulched planting beds with a thick layer of scrap paper, then a layer of grass clippings over that. Now I just put the paper on our autumn brush fire in the horse’s pasture.
I’ll save you a step. The next time your garbage bin gets emptied, fill it a quarter of the way with water and dump some of the papers in there. Stir it every few hours for a day or two until it’s pulp and then the next week you can wheel the whole thing, pulp, water and garbage right out to the road to be emptied. It might take a few months to get rid of everything, but big deal. (Except that winter is coming so it’ll freeze).
But, another vote for investing in a nice cross cut shredder, and from now on , shredding everything as you don’t need it anymore.
