<p>I’ve been making a fire in the backyard and just burning all the stuff but I’m tired of doing tht and usually end up holding a ton thru the winter until the spring and not so cold out.</p>
<p>I had a shredder once and it cost about 200 and it NEVER worked. That was five years ago, though. Have they gotten better. Is the one at Costco any good?</p>
<p>Do I really need to fret over this trash? Sometimes I think we’re all being too paranoid.</p>
<p>I tear off the identifying info so we have a bag or two per year. That’s all. Our town runs “green events” where a shredder comes and you get a bulk rate. But even Staples now shreds for not much money.</p>
<p>Oh, my experience is any cross cut shredder is fine and they all bog down if you use them a lot. The ones that don’t are the really big ones for offices.</p>
<p>Suggest you consider the pages at a time feature also. I think mine is 12 and it’s worked fine.</p>
<p>After having several shredders die, I finally had enough. I now keep an old paper box in the basement and throw everything I want shredded in it. Twice a year our credit union has a free shredding event and I drop off the box. Otherwise, if I need stuff shredded, I watch our town website and for about $4.00, they shred stuff during their shredding event. I find shredders to be a royal pain and I don’t want to own one anymore.</p>
<p>Nearly any moderate duty cross-cut home shredder should take a bunch of sheets, staples, credit cards. The light duty ones, like the kind that sit on top of a waste basket, are a waste of money. But all of the moderate duty ones will heat up if you shred a lot and they can’t eat vast quantities so if you let a box fill up then shredding becomes an activity, complete with oiling the cutters & letting the motor cool. </p>
<p>This is why we only save the names and addresses and other small bits. We recycle the rest. We’ve learned to be very annoyed by credit card offers that print your name in 3 or 4 places, have your address hidden somewhere at the bottom, etc. I spend a few minutes every day ripping apart the mail.</p>
<p>Good advice here. Thanks so much.</p>
<p>I recently relocated to a new state and miss my old shredder place where for 20 bucks I’d watch as they’d pulverize several big garbage bags of stuff for me. I did about once per year. Can’t seem that here in NJ. Will contact our credit union – that’s a good idea.</p>
<p>I don’t really want to go to the trouble of tearing off the personal information. And many of the documents I want to get rid of right now are old statements from funds we still hold. I don’t want to keep filing the paper statements that come every month but essentially the entire two or three page mailing is sensitive stuff. Have tried to move what I can to electronic statements, of course.</p>
<p>I’ll keep looking for a place that will destroy the stuff for a reasonable price. Agree that shredders are a pain in the you-know-what.</p>
<p>I thought this was going to be about snowboarding. LOL.</p>
<p>No advice.</p>
<p>I have a large Fellowes DM12Ct (I think that’s the model number) in my office and I shred everything that might have any personal info or business info. Prior to getting this floor model, I killed several small desk top sized shredders by trying to shred too many pages at once. So I would opt for a shredder that can shred more pages at a time. You may not ever need to shred a stack, but at least you will have a more powerful motor. Mine also shreds CDs and credit cards, and I use that function more than I ever expected. </p>
<p>Also, so that you have fewer items to shred, you can opt out of certain junk mail like credit card offers. This website has info about opting out. I did this a couple years ago and it did cut out lots of junk mail and credit card offers.</p>
<p>[Unsolicited</a> Mail, Telemarketing and Email: Where to Go to “Just Say No”](<a href=“http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt063.shtm]Unsolicited”>How To Stop Junk Mail | Consumer Advice)</p>
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<p>^^^^ This.</p>
<p>Yes, we are being a little paranoid but a shredder is a good thing to have for special pieces of paper.</p>
<p>And yes, make sure to get a cross-cut shredder (the one that cuts into little pieces) not the ones that cut strips a quarter-inch wide.</p>
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<p>Try to do a google search of shredding service in your NJ town. There is one in Main St., Madison and their rates are:
$1/lb
$0.75/lb when greater than 100 lbs plus free pickup</p>
<p>Any Staples Copy & Print - which may in most Staples stores, I don’t know - does it for 79 cents a pound. Done by Iron Mountain as contractor, meaning the same people who do industrial/commercial shredding. They also run specials.</p>
<p>Well turns out my NJ county runs free shredding on most Saturday mornings. I’m also taking note of the Staples service. That’s good back up if I can’t make the free Saturday morning. </p>
<p>Barfly, thank you SO much for the link to the site to stop the credit card mailings. I’ve shared with several friends already.</p>
<p>I heard somewhere, something like …</p>
<p>It takes a thief a few minutes to recreate your document when it is shredded into strips.</p>
<p>For a cross cut shredder (pieces about 1 inch long, 1/4 inch wide) a few hours to reconstruct, faster if you scan the pieces, and let a computer do it.</p>
<p>For a micro shredder (pieces the size of an *) would take days to reconstruct a page.</p>
<p>Turning it into lint is virtually impossible to reconstruct.</p>
<p>So, which shredder you buy depends upon what you want to achieve. The casual thief would be deterred by a cross cut shredder. You would need the micro shredder to deter a determined thief, ex spouse, etc,</p>
<p>OperaDad, I wonder how long it would take to reconstruct a page when there are hundreds of pages in the shreds! We have been victims, so I shred everything that has any personal info on it. I’m calming down a bit, however. I no longer dump coffee grounds and used kitty litter on the shreds.</p>
<p>I put really confidential stuff down the garbage disposal (about three pieces of paper a year). The rest I save and shred commercially.</p>
<p>We burned out one shredder. I’m happy with our replacement, a Fellowes DS-1200C. It’s a splurge - toting paperwork to local free shredding is more cost effective.</p>
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<p>Now there’s an idea! :)</p>
<p>Ok…what items are SO confidential that they have to go down a garbage disposal? An inquiring mind wants to know.</p>
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<p>Depends upon how diligent you are. If it is cross cut, and you make the effort to mix up ALL the shreds, then it could take forever. Otherwise, the pieces for a page tend to be close to each other.</p>
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<p>A little blackmail here, a little tryst there …</p>
<p>Dentmom: the last piece of paper that went down the disposal was a note to my husband with my credit card number, CCV, and exp. date on it (he was using it for something). The piece before that was a voided check.</p>