Ok, maybe not really. In all honesty, it’s been slowing down for quite some time. Today though I took a look underneath and what I found was rather unfortunate.
It wasn’t pretty folks. See that big wad of paper there in the middle? Sarah and I worked with all of the tools we had; scissors, tweezers, chopsticks. We’re creative that way. As I was sweating and cleaning this paper jam out of the blades I was realizing this might be the end for my trusty shredder. I’ve been considering purchasing a new one since I do shredding for clients now as well but I was trying to get as much use out of this one as possible before making an investment.
Here’s the verdict. I don’t think you can really see it very well since I was taking photos with my phone but there are several blades right in the middle that are actually fused together. As we were cleaning it out I was thinking maybe a staple had gotten stuck in there. Once we got down to the nitty-gritty though we could see that several blades were actually bent and seemed to be melted together.
How in the world that might have happened is beyond me. Apparently this shredder felt it was being worked way too hard.
It does still work but you have to stop way too often and clean out the blades so it looks like it’s time for some research into a new one.
How do you handle shredding at your house?
How do you handle papers with sensitive information? Do you shred everything that has even your address on it or are you more conservative, recycling envelopes and shredding papers with personal information only? Do you do your own shredding or take it out to an office store for destruction? Do you shred papers as they come in the mail or do you collect them for a while until you have a small pile of papers to shred?
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