| The machine was dead. I stood there holding a handful of unshredded shame.
I unplugged it, flipped it upside down and saw that it was stuck. Like, really stuck. Damn. I grabbed my Phillips-head screwdriver, popped the bottom off, but quickly realized I’d probably need pliers to yank the paper out. After some struggling, it hit me: tweezers would actually be way better for this kind of precision rescue mission. This was however, not the job for my beloved (and now extinct) eyebrow tweezers. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Naturally, just the day before, I had almost bought a pair of cutlery tweezers from a local kitchen store. They were right there at the counter. I picked them up, debated for a minute... and put them back, thinking, Nah, I’ll come back if I really need them. Well, look at me now, thwarted by my own indecision less than 24 hours later.
The next day, I headed back up the street, marched into that kitchen store, and bought two styles of cutlery tweezers. Once I got home, I managed to clear out the very jammed paper with my spiffy new kitchen tool (highly recommend, by the way). It fit between the tight blades and did the job perfectly. Victory! I fully expected the shredder to spring back to life.
Alas, no.
It works perfectly... in reverse. But shredding? Shredding is dead.
Fine. I'll watch YouTube videos and figure it out. How hard could it be? Since the motor is working, the suggested hack is to swap the appropriate wires so the reverse is now powering the ‘on’ switch. Simple enough.
…
This is the part where I’d hoped to gleefully regale you with how I rewired the shredder and brought it back to life, Lazarus-style. Instead, dear reader, I made things worse. Once reassembled, the button was stuck in the 'on' position and refused to budge. It wouldn't even work in reverse anymore.
In my defense, the videos available weren’t the same brand of shredder (AmazonBasics, btw. Aptly named too) and the instructors casually skipped over the actual rewiring part, so I was flying blind. Le sigh. I like to tell myself their models were simpler or it was manufactured obsolesce.
Today, my new shredder was delivered and the broken one is listed for free on Craigslist. May it find a new life—or at least a patient new owner.
Things my dead shredder taught us: #1: Always trust your spider sense #2: Invest in a pair—or two—of cutlery tweezers. They're home project gold #3: When you catch yourself thinking, How hard could it be?, proceed with extreme caution
Do you use cutlery tweezers for household use? Have you accidentally destroyed your shredder? Tell me all about it.
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