Loann Eriks, Times senior clerk, who does a lot of shredding in our office, volunteered to take on the project of testing the home shredders. Here are some tips from our testing:

The larger the shredder, the more powerful it was.

Make sure you feed the paper straight into the machine to keep it from wrinkling. Wrinkled paper usually causes paper jams.

Our tester was impressed by the safety factors built into each machine. If the shredder part was not attached to the basket properly or wasn't on tight, the shredder wouldn't work.

Read the directions carefully. Don't expect the machine to do more than advertised.

More robust models are typically larger and have a much larger waste bin, which can make storage of the shredder difficult if your home office is small — especially if you shred infrequently.

Continuous running of shredders overheats the machines, so if you have a large number of documents, plan on doing them in batches with resting time in-between. This is pretty standard with shredders, although, obviously, better ones can go longer before needing a rest and don't need to rest as long before resuming work.

Be sure the shredder's mouth is at least wide enough to handle a standard piece of paper — having to fold paper in half before feeding takes time and means you can shred fewer pages at once.

Auto shutoff between shreddings is a helpful feature; it reduces the amount of unproductive effort your machine has to exert, thus allowing you to shred longer