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February 25, 2025

Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter

Even if you don’t think you have anything to hide, you need a paper shredder. Garbage and recycling bins full of bank statements and credit card offers are treasure troves for identity thieves. Your best defense is a paper shredder, which chomps through sensitive documents and spits them out as confetti.

After researching more than 25 shredders and running over 4,000 sheets of paper (along with CDs and credit cards) through nine of them, we found the best one for most people’s personal and home-office use. And if you tend to have novella-sized stacks of paper to shred, first of all, we have questions. And second, we have a heavier-duty recommendation for you.

Got papers? Let’s shred→

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Marki Williams/NYT Wirecutter

But wait: Isn’t shredded paper still paper, and thus recyclable? Isn’t throwing away shredded paper into the garbage wasteful? The answer to both questions is, well, kind of.

The best way to dispose of your shredded paper→

Our all-time favorite pen It’s affordable and quick-drying. Plus, it writes smoothly and won’t skip or bleed→

How to best organize your snail mail Our advice for reducing spam mail and our favorite systems to deal with the mail you do need→

A printer you can get working in under 10 minutes (yes, really) It produces crisp text and vibrant graphics→

How to organize life’s most important documents If your papers dance between a pile on the kitchen table and an unmarked box in the garage, it’s time to develop a proper filing system→

Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter

While it can be tempting to give children a pair of hand-me-down grown-up headphones, that isn’t the best option. The unregulated volume levels can lead to hearing damage.

Instead, we recommend getting a good pair of volume-limiting kids headphones—and one of our favorites is on sale right now. These wireless headphones offer good sound quality, easy-to-use controls, a comfortable fit, and active noise cancellation—making them the best choice for kids who travel frequently.

Why we love these (currently on-sale!) headphones→

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