Your manuscripts and drafts are valuable. Could you recreate them if your harddrive crashed? Make sure that you back up your work frequently. Keep a spare copy in a fire-proof save or somewhere other than your home in case there is a flood, fire, or other emergency.

I recycle as much as possible, so I invested in a high-end shredder for junk mail and out-dated paper drafts. I shred old drafts instead of tossing them. If you have information on old CDs or disks that you want to dispose of, make sure to scratch or puncture them before you throw them in the trash.

If you give away, sell, or donate an old PC, make sure that you use a tool to truly remove old files. Deleting the file isn't good enough.