Should I Buy A Paper Shredder

If you have tons of paper, like boxes of family records, or taxes, a personal shredder just isn't going to hack it.In that case you'd want a service to shred documents for you.However, when choosing a shredder you need to be aware that there are a lot of options.

A lot of junk mail has bar codes stamped on it, and that can have personal information embedded in it.

In the wrong person's hands it could really be abused. There are two main types of shredders for consumers: strip-cut, which slices ribbons out of a sheet of paper, and cross-cut, which makes confetti by cutting both horizontally and vertically.

The single-sheet shredders are just not very practical. For consumer machines, that means you're overworking the shredder if you use it more than the amount listed, it could overheat or be damaged. It's only a general guide of a machine's hardiness.

But say you see one that's rated for 1,000 sheets a day and you come in at 9 a.m., shred that much paper, and are done by — does that mean you can't shred again that day? Most have sensors, so they start shredding when you put a piece of paper in and turn off when it's shredded.

Cross-cut shredders are more secure because someone could still go through a pile of strip-cut paper and tape the pieces back together, like they do in the movies.

So shell out a few extra bucks for a cross-cut model and sleep a little better at night.There are inexpensive machines that shred just one sheet of paper at a time, and models that cost a little more that can handle 10 to 12 sheets at a time.So depending on how much you need to shred on a daily basis, the question comes down to whether you want to spend 20 minutes a day doing it or three minutes.GLENN EDELSTEIN, VICE PRESIDENT OF ALL SHREDDING CORPORATION, NEW YORK, 212-344-1010; Looking for a shredder machine for your office or home?Considering that a piece of unopened junk mail contains an envelope plus a sheet or two of paper folded three times, that's eight sheets right there.The minimum shredder capacity I would recommend is 8 to 10 sheets.After complaining about my current shredder’s lack of robustness while at a dinner party, I realized, based on the blank stares from a few of my companions, that perhaps shredders were not as ubiquitous as I thought.I’m not a fan of the space that a shredder takes up (although the unit in our home is relatively tiny), but it seems to me like an indispensable part of modern life.I'm a huge recycling guy, too, so an added benefit of having us deal with your paper is that even if you don't have recycling in your area, we work in bulk so recyclers come to us.Let's put it this way — when the Giants won 2008's Super Bowl, I really enjoyed the ticker-tape parade because a lot of that ticker coming down came from my shredders.