Outdated Tax Records and Unnecessary Paperwork
Paper clutter quietly takes over dining room tables, kitchen counters, and filing cabinets, creating immense visual stress in your home. Professional organizers target stacks of old receipts, utility bills, and expired tax documents early in the decluttering process because shedding this paper weight instantly makes your space feel lighter and more manageable.
While you might worry about throwing away something important, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides very clear guidelines on what you actually need to retain.
As a general rule, you should keep your tax returns and supporting documents for three years from the date you filed. The IRS only requires you to hold records for six years if you failed to report more than 25 percent of the gross income shown on your return, or seven years if you claim a loss from a bad debt deduction.
Everything else simply takes up unnecessary space. Once you pass these specific timeframes, you can confidently run those documents through a shredder. To simplify your paper management, follow this straightforward document purging checklist:
- Shred immediately: ATM receipts, expired warranties, daily junk mail, and credit card offers.
- Shred after one year: Monthly bank statements, undisputed medical bills, and routine utility bills.
- Shred after three years: General tax returns, W-2 forms, and supporting tax receipts (unless you have a complex tax situation requiring a longer hold).
- Keep forever: Birth certificates, marriage licenses, social security cards, and property deeds.
Yes I have done all these things 6 months ago, and I’ve got to do it again, electronics and chargers strings that have frayed. I’ve just thrown away ink pens I’ve had for a year or more, my new ones don’t last 2 months. I buy in bulk bc I get use to that style. Then they change and then the news bleed. I don’t like certain things to change. If it works don’t change it.
Don’t throw away canvas, or other types of, bags. Reuse them when you go shopping so you don’t get plastic bags!
Very helpful. I’m starting with the cabinet under my bathroom sink because that annoys me the most then on to the linen closet.
Thank you for providing me with a very helpful guide to declutter in an organized manner.
Great information. Great advice.
Great ideas. Useful. Common Sense. Thank you
Be careful about medical bills. My insurer tried to retroactively deny a claim for surgery eighteen months after the fact. I had to use my old records to prove that my claim was valid. I would keep them for five years to be safe. Because the insurance racket in America is so corrupt, I might even consider keeping them in perpetuity.
EXCELLENT column full of very helpful advice for those of us who are guilty of the save-everything-mode because some day we may need it!
Are there any guides or books that I can purchase to give me something in writing showing a list of things that I should keep or throw out.?
Hilarious. I must be a professional organizer because I am in the middle of similar madness!
Excellent advice thank you