Choosing a Shredder that Fits Your Needs

There are several different kinds of paper shredders out there for you to choose from, with the least secure being the kind of shredder that makes your documents into long strips, and the most secure that makes your documents into tiny amounts that can be passed through a screen. The shredders that you see in the store are often the simpler kinds, but here is a rundown of the different kinds of shredders in the order of where they fit in the security scheme of things:

• Strip-cut shredders, which, as I said before, are the easiest to reassemble documents from since they are just long puzzle pieces.
• Confetti-cut or cross-cut shredders, which are a bit better because they shred documents into parallelograms, such as rhomboids, rectangles, or diamonds.
• Particle-cut shredders cut documents into tiny squares or circles.
• Disintegrator shredders and Granulator shredders do pretty much what their names imply by cutting your documents into different shapes at random until the paper's remnants are small enough to pass through a mesh.
• Hammermill shredders are great because the documents you put into one of those basically get pounded through a screen.
• Pierce and Tear Shredders do just what their names say they do, which is to pierce the paper and then tear it up from there.
• Grinder shredders simply grind the paper until it is so small that it can pass through a screen.

Other features you may wish to consider when choosing a shredder are things like jam-proof shredders, which keep your shredder from taking in amounts of paper it can't handle; energy savers, which put the shredder into a sleep mode when you are not using them; silent operation, which makes your shredder a lot quieter when it is running; safety sensor, which makes it so your shredder automatically turns off as soon as your hands get too close to the blades; and mess reduction, which is great because the machine cleans its own blades of paper buildup and a sensor tells you when it is time to clean out the bin that contains all the shredding remnants.