For as long as I can remember, I have had a shredder at my house. I have had several of them, each one getting progressively bigger and more powerful. The one I currently have is as big as a regular trash can and sits dormant 95% of the time in a closet. Since I am pretty much paperless here at home with my Evernote setup and all my bills being automatically and online, I don’t really use the shredder that much anymore. And because I am on a quest to get rid of everything in my house/life that doesn’t serve some sort of purpose, I have been contemplating getting rid of it – but then I wondered about when I actually had something to shred. Should I bring it over to a friends house who has a shredder? Should I spend 20 minutes with a pair of scissors and a cross-cut pattern? I remember back when I worked in the corporate world there were shredding companies that would drive up to your office and take all the documents to be shredded out to the parking lot, where they would make mince meat out of all your secrets. But there was nothing for the little guy who works at home…until now.
Seems OfficeMax decided there was a market for small-scale shredding services, and I am very glad to hear it! On January 5th they announced that Shred-it, an information security company, would be “providing secure document destruction service to consumers and small businesses alike. Beginning in January, OfficeMax will offer the Shred-it document destruction program at nearly all of the company’s more than 1,000 stores nationwide as part of its OfficeMax ImPress(R) suite of in-store print and document services.” Sweet! Pricing for the new service is determined by weight of the materials to be shredded: $.59 per pound for up to five pounds, $.49 per pound for six to ten pounds, and $.39 per pound for 11 pounds and above.
You know what this does? It lets me get rid of a giant machine in my house that rarely gets used.
I can now keep just a single folder in my small file cabinet that is designated “Shred”. Once it is full, I can truck on over to OfficeMax (and likely other stores, once they get wind) and have them do the work for me for a few bucks every few months. And that’s one more thing out of my house that I no longer have to maintain, store, or move – just the way I want it!
For $5 at a garage sale, you can get a tiny/small shredder that is not as big as a small trash can and you have the convenience of not having to drive to Office Max – which is 80 miles away… etc…. In small towns there are no bigbox supply stores, so a shredder is still a good way to go. Besides that, I have a use for all the shreds myself….
The added benefit is that once shredded, the paper can go into the compost pile where it readily disintegrates. Or it is a good fire starter in the winter in the wood stove 🙂 Or as packaging material for those out of town gifts I send to family. There is always a re-use for it 🙂
My shredder is not a giant machine – it is only 8 inches across, and 12 inches long, and about 18 inches high – smaller than a little trash can 🙂
Office Max is less than 1 mile from my house. 🙂 For those living far away from one, I imagine it would be better to own your own. For me, I am determined to get rid of everything in my house I don’t use on an almost-daily, or at least weekly, basis.
I just take mine to work. Like you, I don’t have that much anymore, so it’s not worth having my own shredder. I keep a manilla envelope in my computer backpack, and when something needs to be shredded, I put it in there. Then every so often at work, I put it into the shredder.
With all the credit card offers I get, I DO use it on at least a weekly basis… 🙁 At least in the non-woodstove season 🙂
And as I don’t intend to work much longer, I’ll need it at home when I quit.
But in other areas, I am working on de-cluttering – at least a box a week of ‘clutter’ is going out of the house now – and it feels great!
I have a shredder and I use it often. It’s a wastebasket sized one and I empty it at least once a week. But this is changing because I have recently got my name off all of those lists that cause junk mail and things I don’t want. I’m still trying to get all of my bills where I don’t get statements but have found that my insurance company won’t do that with my EOB’s. I was bummed to hear that. I get pages per month because I get a page for every prescription or anything else I do. But I am happy to say that life is getting more and more decluttered. It feels good.
I am not fond of paying bills online, unless I am just really running late. Everyone is complaining about the price of postage… BUT, if it was used by everyone the cost wouldn’t keep going up. It seems sad to me that no one appreciates what they do almost everyday for us. It seems now all my event invites are digital as well as cards, letters, even some gift cards. It may come to the point that they shut down in areas or stop delivering on certain days! I sure don’t want to have to drive everyday to a central box in the middle of town to get my mail… Sorry for my little soap box moment, but I just don’t hear anyone talk about this and I believe it is a serious issue.
Anyway, that sounds like a really good service to have. I’ve always thought about buying a shredded but I’ve read about most having problems burning out, so I’ve never shelled out the money for one. I would definitely pay for that service to not have to deal with having a shredder take up the space in my home for minimal use.
Did not know this about OfficeMax. I used our local recycling center and they had a minimum fee of $ 20.00 which seemed pretty high for my grocery bag of receipts. Then the guy took my bag and I could not actually see him shred the contents. This made me very uneasy. I was later told I could have donned a hard hat to watch the process.
Having just finished my taxes, I cleaned out my “finance” files and burned them, but I would like to do a whole lot more file cleaning – so I’m going to check with my local OfficeMax. I have a shredder that we use for everyday credit card offers, etc. but to sit and feed a couple bags of papers is far more than I want to do.
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Hi,thanks for sharing the information regarding to shredding services provided by office max.Thanks so much again for sharing the information…..
I’m running to OfficeMax today to get rid of my papers. Thanks for sharing that info. I’ve owned 2 shredders and they broke within a few months of use. If you’re going to buy a home shredder, buy a heavy duty one. It said it could shred credit cards. Nope. Broke it. Not spending any more money on a home shredder.