Times are weird with the coronavirus, but there’s something you can do that will help you feel more control of your life: get a shredder, and shred your junk mail.
Here’s the one I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YFTHJ9C. It’s completely fine.
Here’s how it works: credit card companies insist on asking you to get a new credit card. You’re asking me this now? Discover Card, you’ve asked me this every few months for my entire adult life. Discover this: my shredder.
Hi, The Greater Boston Food Bank. I completely support your cause, and what you’re doing is more important now than probably ever, and it’s true that I donated to you once, because I went to a wedding in Cambridge where the couple asked us to donate to you rather than get a gift, but I kind of think you’ve spent a good chunk of the money I gave you on postage and pamphlets at this point, and now I’ve let you sit on my desk for two months out of some kind of guilt? I’m so sorry, but you know what else is hungry is my shredder. No, that’s bad. I’m leaving the awful joke in and making one more donation. Your long game worked.
Receipts? Why not give them a quick shred?
Flyer from the local dentist? It’s gone now.
Amy Klobuchar postcard from early in the campaign when I was keeping my options open? It’s time for you to come off the fridge and go into the shredder.
When I made the purchase, I was thinking it would be mainly for shredding sensitive documents, and I very occasionally use it for that. But I didn’t know I would find it so therapeutic to just make things go away. This is perhaps gruesome, but every time I use it, I think of that one scene in Fargo where they’re putting a person in a woodchipper. I don’t find that therapeutic (don’t worry, this isn’t my confession that I’m a psychopath) but it’s very nice to just… make … problems … disappear.
Not even disappear, exactly, but make problems into confetti.
Get a shredder.
