Another weird Christmas present from my brother

My little brother has a knack of buying Christmas presents which seem odd at first, but wind up being pretty darn good. This Fellowes Shredmate is a great example of that phenomenon.

Upon opening my Christmas gift from my brother, I thought, "A shredder? What the hell am I going to do with a shredder?" I quickly found out what one could do with a shredder -- shred things. Lots of things. Everything that isn't nailed down, in fact.

For about a week, the poor shredder was tossed in a corner while I tried to decide what to do with it. Now, my wife and I just moved (thank God) back to my hometown in central Arkansas and, as such, we had a lot of stuff laying around that needed a good shredding. While we were cleaning out our wallets, we ran across a lot of stuff we didn't need. So, we got to talking about it, "What if this library card from Springdale, Ark., was to fall into the wrong hands? Could be dangerous. Let's shred it!"

And, so it went. We figured out old bills, useless check cashing cards and the like could be munched up quickly in this thing. The opening is the perfect size for those "pre-approved credit card" letters we get in the mail constantly, and it's probably a good idea to destroy those, too. In fact, any small cards or bits of paper you don't want can be destroyed in this. It's easy to get carried away while in a shredding frenzy, however. For example, we wound up shredding the piece of paper which had the number of my wife's brother written down on it, and my son tried to feed some of the closing documents from the sale of our house into the thing at one point.

Speaking of kids, nothing entertains children quite like a shredder. Some of the most fun I had in years resulted from handing my four-year-old daughter a stack of papers and saying, "Shred them, girl. Shred them all!" She spent a good 15 minutes shredding and giggling. Dandy fun.

And, that brings me to a couple of features of this thing. The opening is small and narrow, but that's good for safety reasons. It's virtually impossible for an adult to get a finger shredded in the Fellowes Shredmate, and there's a safety latch which must be tripped before the unit will shred anything (it's a latch over the opening which is usually triggered by a piece of paper or something). The opening is too narrow, in fact, for my daughter's fingers to fit into it. That's all good for the kid is curious about everything and might wind up hurt (ask me sometime about the time she ran out of the back door of my house, got out the gate leading from the fenced-in yard, ran down the street and jumped in a creek if you want to know about what an adventurous type that kid is).

Also, my daughter's shredding revealed just how small the waste basket attached to the unit is. After about five minutes of shredding (well, three minutes of shredding and two minutes of jumping around and giggling), the waste basket filled up and had to be emptied. Luckily, the unit is disabled is it's not seated on the waste basket properly -- that was fortunate as my daughter kept trying to jam paper into the shredder when I was trying to empty the basket.

I should mention the opening again as that could bother some people. It's a little bit wider than a standard envelope, and that can be bothersome if you have a lot of paper to shred. Larger bits of paper must be folded in order to fit in the slot, and the thing isn't too wide, either -- we can fit four or five folded sheets into it without much trouble.

The shredding mechanism is pretty durable, too. This thing chews through credit cards, cardboard and staples with ease, and there's a reverse switch in case you get something jammed in it (we've used that a few times). I doubt this would stand up for long in a high-volume, office environment (some law firms around here might as well use wood chippers for shredding), but this is a personal shredder. It suits our needs just fine.

One thing I love about this machine is that it's a tremendously simple design. There's not a whole lot that can go wrong with it, in fact. The technology here isn't exactly advanced, and the unit appears to be of sound, compact construction. I am of the opinion that simple designs are always best when it comes to reliability, and few designs are simpler than this one.

All in all, this was an odd gift to receive, but it's a very useful one. These days, you can't be too careful about security, and this shredder grinds everything into nice, confetti-sized pieces. The opening's a bit on the narrow side, but that's the only complaint I have about this unit.

Maybe next year, my brother will give me that laminator I've always wanted.