Your workplace has accumulated so much paperwork over the last seven years that you don’t have enough space to fit it all. You have closets filled to the ceiling with boxes of pages, your cabinets are falling apart and papers are even being found under the kitchen sink. Yikes.

Every business can attest to the fact that they have a paper problem. Unfortunately, when this much paper is accrued, then it is a risk to the privacy and security of your company.

This is why so many firms, both in the public and private sector, have adopted paper shredding, or document destruction, as a way to get a grip on their corporate security. Yes, there are still dumpster divers around – it isn’t just hacking into computers and stealing information.

Whether it is to protect your company’s identity or to make some space in your office, paper shredding is a measure that should be employed as soon as possible.

Here are five paper shredding tips for your office:

1. Declutter Your Work Space

Unsure what you should shred? It’s simple: go through your cubicle, desks, office and other workspaces and compile all of your paper together. It is highly likely that 95 percent of all of those nearby papers are just garbage and should be destroyed immediately.

Of course, you must apply common sense and study each piece of paper to ensure it’s not important, otherwise you’ll be in trouble and wonder where something is in the office.

2. Go Through Your Boxes

This will certainly be difficult: grabbing all of your boxes and going through each one.

For the last several years, you have stored every piece of paper you have possibly created and placed it in the box, put away in the closet until time memoriam. Well, now would be an opportune time to reach for these boxes and meticulously peruse through each piece of paper.

Remember, for each box, it is wise to put the needed papers on one side and the unneeded on the other side.

3. Purchase a Paper Shredding Device

Here is what you shouldn’t do: rip your pages in half and put them in a garbage bag. Here is what you should do: insert your papers in a shredding device and destroy the pages completely.

That’s it.

All you need to do is head over to an office supply store, or browse on Amazon, and purchase a paper shredding machine. It is imperative that you buy a device that shreds your paper in a criss-cross form rather than one single vertical line. That way no one can disseminate the information.

4. Hire a Professional Paper Shredding Firm

Do you have thousands of tons of paper? Well, the only solution for you is to hire a professional paper shredding company. They have the manpower, the equipment, the truck and the ability to travel to a recycling plant and dump your destroyed paper there.

By tapping a paper shredding firm, you save time, resources and energy.

5. Adopt a Paperless Office

To fully avoid paper and the necessary shredding that comes a long with it in the future, you should gradually transform your office into a paperless oasis. This will inevitably take time, but it is a worthwhile investment to remaining secure, being eco-friendly and not having to worry about shredding a year from now.

In other words, use the power of digital!