Into the cloud! I must have put 50 pounds of paper through my little $14 shredder (R.I.P.), one sheet at a time. My first instinct was to scan the whole pile (My friend Alan recommends the Fujitsu S300M Scan-to-PDF), but then I realized the goal is not to move the mayhem onto my hard drive. For the past decade my various filing strategies have all legitimized hoarding every single scrap of business I’ve ever conducted. Years of investment statements, rental contracts, oil change receipts, student loan deferment notices (I’m a grad student and Uncle Sam apparently hates trees) — if these things were skee ball tickets, I’d be in lava lamp heaven, but let’s be clear: an account number doesn’t make garbage important, just mildly personalized. I straightened up my last seven years of tax documents plus this year’s receipts and any critical financial/medical/auto records that I can’t already access online (all heading to PDF). Everything else is rabbit bedding “in the cloud.”