For the past eight years, with one or two month-long breaks, I’ve been cutting my pizzas with a butter knife.

Why? Because I hate pizza wheels, and those pizza scimitars are just too damn big for someone who, roughly 40% of the time, is cutting a Totino’s Party Pizza.

I should probably explain myself before I get to the product.

I’ve cut a few pizzas in my life. Not as many as someone who’s held down a job at a Domino’s or a Pizza Hut, mind you [and I bet they use those special rapid cutting rigs like I saw being used at Sam’s Club one day], but I have cut a few.

See, back before I started sincerely failing at adulthood, I had a job at a sub-and-pizza place. I only worked one day a week, if I was needed, to be determined by my mom. So, obviously, my job included, like, 50% of the aspects of pizza making. I did not make the dough, but I did the cheese blend [and shredding cheese for pizza is a surprisingly meditative task when you’re running it through a big cheese shredding machine], and stretch the dough [no tossing], and assemble the pizzas. I put them in the oven, then took them out of the oven.

And I cut them.

I also would load and run the dishwasher–a big restaurant-style machine that scared me a little. I did not like walking near it, because I was always a little afraid that it would suddenly blast me with boiling water or steam me to death. It was big, wet, seriously hot, and powerful.

And this is where my hatred of pizza cutting wheels began. Because that big, powerful restaurant dishwasher could not get pizza wheels completely clean every time. It would sometimes leave bits behind that bar that holds the cutting wheel in place.

Later in life, I got down to seriously failing at adulthood, but trying to pretend that I wasn’t. I bought a house. I got kitchenly stuff.

I got a pizza cutting wheel. A lovely black one. But it still had the bar.

Eventually, I threw that thing away, because it got to be too much of a pain in the ass to clean-and-reclean after every pizza. I was sure there was shit lurking in there that I wasn’t seeing. Shit that would food-poison me to death the next time I cut a pizza.

I got a cheaper one after I was sick of cutting pizzas with butter knives, and it ended up in the trash for the same reason.

The whole time, I would think, ‘There’s got to be a better design’. I would google alternatives, and be disappointed. My options were either The Uncleanable Bar, or Motherfucking Pizza Bat’leth Raahr.

Some of you, I’m sure, may wonder why I did not go with ‘Pizza Bat’leth’. Listen, I am a tiny little female, with a tiny little kitchen. Pizza Bat’leths, while simple and probably perfectly good, are just too damn big for me. I would need another person to take the opposite end. We would be cutting pizzas like old-timey lumberjacks. And then I could play a jaunty Musical Saw tune on it, or something.

Also, I’m just not enough of a Star Trek fan to have Klingon weaponry as kitchen tools.

During my most recent post-pizza-cutting grudge-google, I came across the answer. And it’s so obvious, I feel like an idiot for not coming up with it myself.

Look at this thing.

Just look at it.

It slides right open.

And the cutting wheel just slides right out.

I settled on this one because it was cheaper than the OXO model. It does not come with a guard for storage, but it’s not exactly ‘slice your hand open accidentally’ sharp–and what pizza cutter is, really. If I’m worried about it getting dusty or weird, I can just rinse it off real quick before using it.

And use it I have. Just once, so far, on a Totino’s Party Pizza. It cut that shitty little thin cracker of a pizza quickly and cleanly. Then, before I even sat down to eat, I pulled it apart and washed it off.

I had it washed, dried, reassembled, and put away very quickly. My pizza was still too hot to eat.

Given the clearance between the blade and the housing, I do not expect to have any problems with the frozen pizza options I typically keep in the house.

I’m so glad I found this thing. I was getting sick of cutting pizzas with butter knives, and, had I not found this, I probably would’ve wasted the same money on regular pizza wheels that would’ve eventually been thrown away out of irrational fear.