Paper Shredding

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning, knowing there was something I forgot to do before falling asleep. It didn't take long to remember. My darling wife reminded me that it was recycling day, just before she hurried off to work. Recycling day comes every other Friday around here, and seeing how I missed the last date, my office was overflowing with paper--from printouts of geekbook manuscripts to old software marketing collateral ...

As I scrambled to get everything--and I mean everything (we have to recycle paper, cardboard, batteries, glass, plastic, aluminum, and tin)--up to the curb, a couple of the paper bags ripped. Junk mail spewed all over the garage floor.

After locating some heavy-duty paper shopping bags, I began dutifully loading them ... and then it hit me ...

While I'm obsessive about tearing any paperwork that's remotely financial-related into tiny pieces, my wife isn't. She merely rips the stuff in half (if that) and tosses it into the recycling bin. That immediately got me thinking that my home office needs a good paper shredder.

Honestly, I'd never given paper shredders all that much thought before. But with identity theft stories in the news night after night, it's finally dawned on me that a paper shredder would make a whole lot of sense.

Once upon a time, I worked for a small business owner that was totally compulsive about shredding all of the paper in his office. He shredded absolutely everything. The excuse he gave was that he worried that his competition might do some midnight dumpster diving and pull the rabbit out of his hat. The compulsive paper shredding helped ease his paranoia.

Many companies rely on outside paper shredding firms. Some of these outfits will roll up to your door with a big shredder-equipped truck and cart your papers out to the parking lot to do the deed right in front of your eyes.

Of course, the paper shredding needs are far more modest here at ranchero indebto.

A basic cross-cut shredder would fit the bill quite nicely. I'm leaning towards a cross-cut over a strip-cut model for two basic reasons. Cross-cut shredders slice the paper both vertically and horizontally, rendering it into little pieces of confetti. Strip-cut shredders, as the name implies, merely slice the paper into long curly noodles. As such, the cross-cut models deliver a bit more security while rendering the waste paper into a far more compact (and easy to dispose) form.