Privacy

10/16/2013

Privacy.  Everybody wants to be in control of their personal information and has the right to decide who gets that information or who doesn't.  We have a large shredder here at home and all unsolicited mail goes into the shredder.  Likewise, some enclosures that come in the mail that relate to our medical (for instance) claims goes into the shredder.

Believe me when I say that we are not so over the top that we shred everything that comes into the house that is not needed or wanted.  If we did that we would need a much bigger shredder than the one we currently have.  But we do shred a lot of things and over the course of several years have burned up more than a few shredders.  To buy an office-sized shredder capable of going through paper at a super speed costs a lot of money.  I suppose by the time we added up the cost of all the shredders we have bought it is likely that we could have bought a commercial shredder. 

I remember, and likely you do too, when mail that wasn't necessary or solicited just went into the trash much like the morning coffee grounds.  Then somewhere along the way people began to seal identities and wreck havoc on innocent lives.   Hence, the shredder.  The fewer pieces of paper that are circulating around with our name on it the better it is.   Of course when the shredder is full then comes the messy part of emptying the bin.  This is ideally a two man job, one person to hold the large plastic bag while the other person dumps in the contents.  Does some stuff land on the floor?  Unfortunately, the answer is yes.  It's not more than a vacuum can handle, it's just the final step in shredding. 

I know in the office people become masters of pushing down the contents of the shredder bag in hopes that their documents will not overfill the bag and require them to bother with emptying the bag and cleaning up the residual shredded papers that seem to go with the territory of emptying the shredder.  Eventually of course some brave soul has to tackle the problem and just the mere act of dragging the bag out from the bin sends random bits of paper flying.  Those random bits require clean up and I used to use packing tape to get the paper picked up. 

Happy Shredding.

P