Paper shredder recommendations fos 'soho' environment?

Box of matches - 10p :-}

Rexel or Fellowes

If you are going to be doing a lot of shredding, get the largest waste bin on it, that you can. They fill up in minutes.

I have seen one on top of a black bag, on a stand. I liked the look of that.

What sort of usage is it going to get ? if it is going to get a lot of use, expect to pay for something that will take the stick

We use a fellows shredder, straight cut, takes up to 7-8 sheets at a time. It probably gets used every day, all bills/statements/receipts go through it eventually, but also I bring home relatively 'clean' but used paper from work every week and that gets shredded to provided bedding for some small furry animals - cant do that with cross cut shredding !

Mike

I paid serious money for a Fellowes cross-cut shredder - model 105 IIRC. Cross-cut shredders produce a lot less volume of shredded paper as compared with strip shredders.

.. and it's a lot harder to stick the bits back together again. With strip shredders, it's pretty easy to do that.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Costco are selling a nice one on a bin, about 60 quid I think. Capable of cutting up CDs as well. Good thing about Costco is if you don't like it within a month you can take it back for cash refund, and up to a year if it has a fault.

mrcheerful mrcheerful

Pair of scissors? DIY newsgroup after all...

In message , Jon Nicoll writes

We're using the Fellowes PS60C-2 and it works fine. It seems to cost about GBP80 now. As someone else has suggested any good make is likely to out-perform and out-last a cheaper buy.

It's worth using appropriate oil regularly to keep the mechanism working well.

Problem with 2nd-hand is that you don't know what (mis-)use it has been put to before.

What security do you want? Cheap ones are generally straight cut, you'll need to pay more for a crosscut. Straight cut reduces the paper to strips and if you don't think the strips can hold the lines of type... Cross cut produces narrow diamonds much less chance of having a whole CC number on one diamond.

I bought a tiny thing ages ago, takes A4 folded on the narrow edge, straight cut, clips on the side of a box or bin. It does well enough for CC slips, statement bits that I don't need to keep etc. Provided you remember the orientation to cut across the lines of type.

Before going mad with the shreder it might be worth remembering that the IR require financial documentation to be kept for *at least* 22 months past the end of the Tax Year to which they relate. Sole Traders and Companies have 5 and 6 years and capital gains/losses may need much longer periods.

Bloody useless as packing material though

(tried shredding the RS catalogues ... once)

In message , Scott Mills writes

Stanley blades surely ...

Buy an incinerator for around £15 - £20 and burn the stuff.

As others have mentioned, the cheaper machines tend to be straight cut and this very often leaves stuff legible and can be put together (cf. Iranian takeover of US Embassy in Teheran). Cross cut is much better but more expensive. I bought on for around £50 a few years back, but found that the motors heat up and automatically cut out after around half a dozen to a dozen sheets of A4. You then have to wait a few minutes (seems like ages) before you can use it again.

Now I simply fill a waste bin with stuff and then burn it. Means I can chuck all the junk mail, with my name and address listed on it at least twice, straight in the "to burn" bin.

putting the paper in the same bin as food scrap waste is pretty effective :) Or if you have a litter tray...

NT

I burnt a load a credit card receipts a while ago - much more satisfying than cutting them up :o)

Since most people's names and addresses are easily obtainable by all sorts of means I really see no point in shredding junk mail with just your name and address on it - life's too short to worry about such things.

Hundreds (if not thousands) of businesses will have your name and address, it's on the electoral register, you've given it to friends and relations. If someone want's to "steal an identity" they're much more likely to use a name and address they can find quickly (at work, wherever) than they are to go digging around on rubbish dumps for old junk mail.

Or even compost it with the kitchen waste, if you have a compost bin :)

cheers, Pete.

"N. Thornton" wrote | putting the paper in the same bin as food scrap waste is pretty | effective :) Or if you have a litter tray...

Compost heap.

Owain

The one we had at work cost about 3K or something silly but guess that's a bit excessive for home use. ;-)

Would shred anything that you could get into it within reason. CD's, floppy disks, cardboard boxes, an average advertising magazine opened out in one go etc.

Mark S.

We got a cheap cross-cut one off ebay for about £20 plus p&p. It only has a small bin, takes about four sheets max at once, and can only work for a couple of minutes before needing to rest. Great for bank statements, personal info etc, but not good enough for volume use. Then you're talking money depending on how much you want to shred and for how long.