Afraid to toss paper? Ask yourself these 5 questions first

12 October 2026

I wrote this post back in 2012, and I’m re-sharing it because paper is still one of the biggest sources of “just in case” clutter we see. When you’re worried you’ll need something later, it’s easy to keep everything—and then the piles create even more overwhelm. These five questions are a quick way to calm the fear and make confident decisions, one sheet at a time.

Sometimes when I work with clients, I realize that they’ve hung onto a lot of paper out of fear. They’re afraid that they’ll toss or shred a piece of paper and find out later that they need it.

When you’re afraid to let go of paper, before long you get overrun with it. Then you add a feeling of overwhelm to the fear and becomes really hard to go through the paper.

So to make things a little easier (and perhaps take away some of the fear), here are the five questions I suggest you ask yourself when you’re trying to make a decision about whether or not to keep a particular piece of paper (particularly paper related to finances):

Can I get this information online?
Can I replace this paper if necessary?
Have I kept this type of information in the past and, if so, did I reference it?
Can I scan this document and keep it electronically?
What’s the worse that can happen if I get rid of this?

The fact of the matter is that very few papers are irreplaceable. So fear of getting rid of them is pretty unwarranted. You can always ask your tax advisor or your financial planner for advice. But hanging onto unneeded paper can weigh you down.

Why not take a few minutes now to go through your file cabinet and get rid of some outdated paper? (Don’t forget to shred anything with identifying information like social security numbers or account numbers.)

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Tagged with: fear, paper management, paper piles, worth repeating