The reason I don’t is that it just seems that a certain amount of stuff gets lost over the years as it gets transferred from one computer to the next to the one after that. It isn’t a matter of files getting corrupted; it’s a matter of thinking you’ve copied everything over when you haven’t.
I don’t have that problem with paper files. Barring a fire, they’ll always be there.
One of those repair guys told me that the shredder oil that his company sold was just canola oil.
I’ve been using canola oil from the grocery store on my small home shredder and it works fine.
Will mineral oil work (like for butcher block)? And how/where is the oil applied?
Living in the country has its perks. We build a burn pile in one of our pastures. Tree limbs, dried decorative grasses, mouldering hay, etc get added weekly. In the fall boxes of paperwork are tossed on and the bonfire is lit.
Just one caveat: I took many boxes of that kind of stuff to a county shredding day. The use shredding trucks on site, so you know it is being shredded.
But I included some old investment account statements that I thought were useless. I wish I had kept those because they established the cost basis of some stocks that I am still holding and will take a huge loss on when I sell them. They predate when everything was online.
If you contact the investment company (Fidelity, Schwab, etc), they may be able to establish the cost basis for you.
Office supply stores sell shredder oil in little bottles, but like someone said, it’s just vegetable oil. But if you don’t want to mess about with that sort of thing, here is an example of the lubricating sheets I mentioned. About a dollar a sheet, which is a lot for a little oil but might be worth it for some people.
https://www.staples.com/Staples-Shredder-Lubricating-Sheets-24-pk/product_708147
I remove the top of the shredder, turn it over, and put a few drops of the canola oil directly on the blades. Then I run it for a minute or so to get the oil spread around.
I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn’t use mineral oil on a shredder because it will contaminate the shredded paper and make it unsuitable for recycling. I don’t know if this is true, though.
^^ Thanks!
I haven’t figured out how to quote, but this is for Cooking with gas. I worked for a big online brokerage and missing cost basis from stocks held for a long time is very common.
I am not your tax advisor nor lawyer but the IRS is quite aware of this and it doesn’t ping their radar. Holding on to a stock until the bitter end is very common. No one is going to be auditing you for a $75 dot bomb stock that you sold for $2.50 and took a loss on. A cost basis estimate is fine. It’s pretty easy to see who’s up to monkey business being too creative with their taxes and who’s being honest.
And yes, I’ve been on long phone calls with some customers trying to shove words into my mouth to get me to give them a ridiculous cost basis on the recorded line.
To get back to the OP’s question—if I have a lot of stuff that needs to be shredded, I google “community shred day” with the name of my town and the year. Generally something turns up, although it might not be for a few weeks or months. You drive up with your boxes of paper and it’s immediately tossed into an industrial-strength shredder; you don’t even have to take out staples or paper clips. Usually it’s free, or there’s a suggested donation.
Regarding old cancelled checks, I have those in a box from when I first got a checking account. I don’t keep them for financial purposes. Instead, I find that by looking at a check from 1982 I can recall the exact situation when I wrote it, so they act as a sort of diary of life at the time. Something that I miss since moving away from using checks many years ago.
I use flash drives and portable hard drives to save old material and the paper can get tossed into the blue bin after shredding. (I would have used edit but I can’t find that function)
…and then I found the little pen do-dad. 
Every winter I burn most of our expired financial and client records. For confidentiality, I take off my reading glasses, and at this stage of life, can’t read a damned thing. 
Friends of ours who own a large lot have offered the use of their burn barrel. I was going to suggest a burn party for the whole Sunday school class, but I’ll wait. Their granddaughter was killed in a car crash last weekend.