I Broke the Shredder

I'm on a house-cleaning, office-organizing, closet-purging binge. So far I've finished the closet under the stairs and right now I'm tackling the study. I've discovered Kevin's secret stash of his life history in paper. Everything from discussions regarding his starting salary at Andersen in 1994 to detailed notes about how much chandeliers cost in 1996. Truly riveting papers, these are. For trivia's sake, my salary was $33,491 when I quit teaching in 1999. I think my improved mental status far outweighed the loss of that semi-paltry income.

I've been shredding like a mad woman because I also found stacks and stacks of OLD bank statements (as in, we haven't had an account at these banks since we were newlyweds). I probably didn't have to shred all that, but there were numbers and addresses and, well, better safe than sorry.

At least that's what I thought until the shredder broke. It was straining from overuse but seemed fine. But now it won't accept any papers. It's little green light is staring at me, mocking me. I think I'll turn it off and see if it resets after it cools down, but it's looking like one of my first purchases of the new year is going to be a heavy-duty shredder. This little one never stood a chance.