Tear it Up!

Every day I take the trek to the shared mailboxes for my apartment complex, and most of those days I'm disappointed to find nothing important. Very rarely, though, do I receive absolutely nothing -- it seems like I always receive a couple annoying credit card solicitations for which I've "ALREADY BEEN PRE-APPROVED!" and all sorts of other junk mail.

Many people just throw these things in the nearby trash can. Unfortunately for them, there are unscrupulous people out there who go through people's trash, dumpsters, etc., looking for intact credit card applications and the like in someone else's name, so that they can then fill them out and make purchases on someone else's dime. As a result, I've always torn up all potentially harmful or sensitive mail into little, tiny pieces before I throw it away. But...there must be a better way!

In fact, there is. My mother is an attorney and thus handles hundreds of pages of sensitive information every day -- from faxes from other attorneys, to clients' financial records, to important legal documents. Inevitably, a fair portion of these documents become trash, but they can't just be thrown away as such.

So, my mom purchased a Fellowes PS 60 Deluxe Strip-Cut Shredder. It turns important documents into quarter-inch wide strips of confetti, making it impossible to discern the contents of the papers. Moreover, it would be thoroughly impossible to tape a document shredded by the PS 60 Deluxe back together (since all the strips are the same size and look the same).

The Fellowes PS-60 Deluxe Shredder is rated to handle up to 12 sheets at a time, but I've found that it can handle up to about 20-30 sheets of normal-weight paper at one time. Another nice feature of this model is that even if you do manage to jam it by trying to stuff too much paper through the opening at one time, you simply flip the switch for the rollers to move in reverse, and it will feed the jammed paper right out.

The shredding mechanism rests atop a decent-sized trash can (included) that can hold about 3 cubic feet of shredded paper. In my mother's office, the trash can needs to be emptied only about once per week or less, which means one can shred several hundreds of sheets before needing to be emptied. Emptying the can is as simple as turning off the shredding mechanism, removing it from on top of the can, and emptying the shreddings into a regular kitchen-size trash bag.

Probably the most useful feature of the PS 60 Deluxe is the automatic shred feature. One of the settings to which the power switch can be pushed is "Automatic," so that one can simply feed a few sheets through the opening at the top several times a day, without having to flip a power switch on and off each time.

I would recommend the Fellowes PS 60 Deluxe Shredder to anyone who receives a lot of junk mail and those with small or home-based businesses. This particular model is certainly not heavy-duty enough for use at a large office.