Successful Aging: Tips on how to purge the papers and documents you no longer need

Dear readers.
I recently had three questions that dealt with the same topic: Too much paper. Reader No. 1 kept records and notes from students she counseled on careers 40 years ago. Reader No. 2 retained his doctoral dissertation notes from 30 years ago. Reader No. 3 developed two innovative university courses she taught 25 years ago and kept all of the materials. They share the same question – how to get motivated to toss their papers that relate to their former work.
In our alleged paper