Yes, I am writing about another first-world problem. I get a lot of junk mail. It seems unavoidable at this point. The worst junk mail is the kind that has your personal information because ideally, you need to shred it. It may sound old school since so much is online now, but I still make it a practice to shred documents with personal information. 

I used to shred junk mail by feeding the unopened envelopes directly into the shredder. Most shredders can handle the load, but a problem eventually arises. The longer you shred, the hotter the blades get. This is fine if you are just shredding paper. The problem is when you shred envelopes with plastic windows. These plastic windows eventually melt with the heat of the blades and jam up the shredder. I lost a shredder due to this phenomenon.

I suppose one solution is to shred the envelopes with plastic windows first, and don’t shred for too long so that the blades do not get hot. Then the question is how long is too long, and the risk is another jammed up shredder.

To avoid this problem, I now open every envelope with a plastic window so that I can throw away the envelope and shred the contents. Of course, this is a pain and adds more time to a boring task. This solution seems to be working. Now I just need to be more disciplined to shred junk mail as it comes in rather than let it pile up.