Get yer bumf outta there!

A cynic's guide

Yes, you.

You’ve got bumf on your desk, in a pile, and maybe even in a carefully organized file drawer.

While you get points for your drawer organization, the real kudos in organizing are knowing what to keep and when something can go away—and making it go away.

The Cambridge Dictionary describes bumf as ‘printed information, such as an advertisement or official document, that is usually unwanted and not interesting.’

The history of the word?

It’s shorthand for bumfodder. Toilet paper.

The ultimate cynical linguistic opinion of the marketing and other things stuffing our mailboxes.   

Theoretically, it should be easy to dump it all, but advertisers know human nature and design mailers such that we usually can’t just drop them in the recycling bag.

Most of us feel compelled to open the envelope with the puppy dog on the front or promise a gift inside, only to find another donation request. Then add yet another task to consult Charity Navigator to determine if the organization is legitimate and well managed.

We’re suckers for a shiny picture of the happy glowing faces of models wearing the latest brands of clothes or driving the snappiest blazingly fast car that you’ll never get to wind out.

While it may all be unwanted and (mostly) uninteresting, draw a line between advertising and official documents, the second group of bumf that Cambridge cited.

You'll rarely refer to the latter, but you must keep it for a while to prove that you own it, owe it, or that they owe you.

Unless you want to build boxes of paperwork and burden your heirs, you’ll have to endure the bore of revisiting it to cull what’s outlived its usefulness.

No wonder it’s bum fodder, paper or digital. (Help is available if you’re procrastinating about culling.)

So to answer to the question I get most, here’s the short version of the bumf you must keep and for how long.

Official bumf document retention, simplified

• Those that verify who you are, where you came from, where you’ll end up, what you own and owe, and what you've owned and paid.

• Birth, death, adoption, marriage, divorce, property, financial, insurance account ownership, health, and death wishes: until your estate settles.

• Tax returns: 4 years minimum; 7 is better; scan old returns.

Personal and family bumf

• Documents and possessions: As you and your heirs wish, and I promise, they want little, if any, of your stuff.

• Don’t believe me? Ask them.

In the end, it's all bumf.

Here’s your simplified, organized life word for next time: ma