We Have Shred
I’ve finally broken down and added one much-needed piece of equipment to my office… a commercial quality cross-cut paper shredder.
Speaking as someone who has had his identity stolen (along with pieces of my mail stolen from my mailbox every day for about 3 years), and being paranoid about security in general, its ironic that I haven’t had one of these before.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the various models, quality, blade lifetime, number of pages they’ll swallow, and everything else about them. I finally decided that any shredder is better than having no shredder at this point, so I trundled down to my local Staples Office Supply, hoping to find something I could use.
Staples, contradictory to most of their inventory, had about 12 shredder models in stock, and ready for my review. I went through each one them, weighing their pros and cons, usability, physical weight and dimensions (after all, it does have to fit in my office), and the rest of the literature.
I finally settled on a “no-name” brand I’d never heard of, because the blades themselves looked really beefy compared to the others, and because it cut the smallest pieces (4mm x 25mm), and cost. There was one other model there that cut slightly smaller pieces, but was twice the height, and twice the price. It wasn’t really worth it. As one of my friends use to say… “paranoia is a deep pit”
I’ve already put it through its paces, and about 150 pieces of personal material that was in my “To Be Destroyed” queue, and its faring well. It even ate the stapled document I accidentally put through it (I didn’t see the staple until it was too late). It happily ate some older credit cards and lots of other pretty thick material.
So far, I’m pretty impressed. I just wonder how long these blades will last before they need to be sharpened, or I need to replace the unit. Time will tell, I guess. I’ve bought some “shredder blade oil” also, just to be sure the blades stay nice and lubricated as they do their job.
Now to see if I can’t do something useful with these bags of shreddings.