Do you use a paper shredder? I do (and think more people should use them) but I am thinking of upgrading and looking for recommendations.
If you do use a paper shredder, what about your shredder do you like?
If you do not use a paper shredder, what would you look for if you were considering buying one?
Yes, I bought a crosscut shredder from staples over a decade ago (model SPL-TMC-10A) and surprisingly it's still running great. I get plenty of mail I'm not really comfortable just tossing in the bin without shredding. Businesses seem to care less and less about your personal information these days.
No I just tear up papers manually.
This is the way
That can actually be as effective if you throw the different pieces in different trash cans....its highly unlikely they will go out on same trash day so makes the pieces impossible to reconstruct.
Old School.
I do use a paper shredder. It's a pretty cheap one with a weak motor, so it can only handle about 4-5 pages at once. What I like about it is that it's a cross cut shredder and not a straight cut one. I've been using it for I think over 14 years. Bought it to replace my straight cut shredder, which I used for 7 or 8 years before getting the cross cut one. I usually wait until I have a whole bunch of documents before shredding them all at once, so my shredding sessions are very long but occur sparingly.
Yeah, mine is a cheap ($20 like 8 years ago) straight cut and I want to shred even smaller but I need more power. I want to be able to put entire pieces of junk mail in the shredder. I am talking about those thick packets of spam from places like American Express.
If you want better privacy, cross cut is the way to go. There are cheap cross cut ones available but they probably have weak motors like mine that can only handle several sheets at once. And you have to manual feed it each pass.
If you want a heavy duty one that does auto shredding and can run for an hour or so, they get quite pricy. I did a quick search on Amazon, they seem to go for $200-$300. The brand Wolverine comes up a lot when I searched for "heavy duty paper shredder".
shred and burn... great fire pit starter :-)
Agreed. I almost wish I had some sort of small animal that needed fresh bedding all the time cause shredding cardboard and that brown packing paper would be perfect for that.
I currently live in the city so not many open fires atm but I’ve definitely used paper shreds for kindling.
Have one. Had it for years. Shred more than I probably need to but would rather do that than leak info in my trash.
Have had the same one for a long time. No clue what it is. Just get one. It's not complicated but I do appreciate people that test stuff and share their experiences.
Yeah, I have one and use it a lot but it stalls whenever I put a BIG piece of junk mail in it.
I am looking for more power but I think I also need a cross-cut machine.
So patience is the problem you are solving for. ;)
The closest I've been to a similar situation was recently when I moved countries. I had to destroy a bunch of papers, ID copies, and other documents with my personal information, including a notebook I had used for almost three years filled with passwords and some 12-word phrases. After encrypting all the information and decrypting it again to check that everything was in order,
I thought the safest option was to burn everything, so I went up to the roof of the building. I made a small fence with four cement blocks. 🧱 And I proceeded with the lighter, haha, creating a pretty high flame 🔥 😅😂 Then I put it out (I had a small bottle of water, in case it went wrong). Then I realized that by shredding the entire sheets, they burned better and with a more controlled flame. (The roof of the building was concrete, so there was no risk.) I took a few until there was only ash left to sweep up, and that was it.
I'm too tight to buy one. I do it the old fashioned way.
I use a chiminea
An excellent choice. I think shredded paper would make even better kindling that just crumpled paper.
I wish I lived in a colder climate where I had fires all the time.
Yes and it takes an inordinate amount of time to shred just a small stack
Yeah, this is why I’m thinking of upgrading because it takes too long for me to shred stuff.
I may need to drop the cheddar and buy a solid one that can handle the bigger stuff
Yes, get one with a big container so you're not changing it out every 5 minutes. Also, it needs to be able to handle staples, the thick ones. It's very annoying to have to pull them out by the thousands without that.
Yeah, I think what I am envisioning in my head is like a light duty wood chipper.
Almost never, but i did just clean out a box of old paperwork and shredded that.