Found in My Basement: College Papers and Tax Returns

It's been several years since we did a thorough cleaning of boxes. With the older two boys away at camp, we decided to dig into some boxes which have been sitting in our storage closet for years. The best find was a gift card for $100 that we received when Pedro Tulo was born in 2014, and although the expiration date on the card expired, the funds did not, so I called the company and received a brand new card in the mail. We donated toys that my kids have outgrown and have seen better days but may still be useful for preschool-aged kids. We threw away and recycled a lot of stuff. 

As you can tell from the title of this post, I found many folders filled with college papers and tax returns. While I'm not sure how long you're supposed to keep tax returns (it seems like the answer is only 3 years), I have some dating back to my childhood. Why do I have tax returns from when I was only 10? It's not like I was working at Hills or Kmart. Anyway, all tax returns from the 20th century and the 2000s are now gone. Fun fact: I made $1,877 working as a soccer referee in 2005 or 2006. That was definitely before kids when I had a lot more time and was physically able to work multiple games on both days of a weekend. I haven't come close to making this amount in a year since then. I also found this W-2 tax statement proving that I worked at Blockbuster.

On to the college papers. Did you ever want my thoughts on Secretary of State Warren Christopher from a 1997 paper? How about a 1995 paper titled "The Unification of Germany and Its Economic Consequences?" I was quite generous with the margins and font size of this paper about NAFTA. Really needed to make sure I had enough pages!

Just one more item to share. While I wrote about being a summer intern for Congressman Mike Doyle, here is a letter of recommendation from him. Can I still use this or is there an expiration date?