NAPO Expo 2011 Recap (Part 3): Sharing Some Hang-Ups, or Cool Vertical Storage
Hanging around this year’s NAPO expo, I noticed a decided theme: hanging around!
HANGING CHADS
Who voted for annoying plastic hanging folder tabs? Heat, direct sunlight and age discolor them and make the tabs brittle. The “paper” cuts they yield are on par with those from a file folder. (Ouch!) They’re awkward to put in place, and every time you want to change the label, you must remove the old one and find the set of spare perforated labels.
Recently, there’s been a move towards built-in hanging-file tabs. Pendaflex came up with Ready-Tab Reinforced Hanging File Folders with pre-attached
reinforced polylaminate clear tabs. The tabs are build-in to the folders and pre-set in three or five tabbing positions for letter-sized hanging folders and six positions in legal sized. The tabs merely fold up into view and snap into place, so there’s no searching for lost plastic tabs, nor any struggling to position tabs into place. It’s an elegant solution that eliminates those annoying hard plastic tabs everyone hates. However, if you’ve got sausage fingers like Paper Doll‘s, you’ll still struggle to label and insert the tiny perforated papers into the little sleeves.
Pendaflex’s ReadyTab Reinforced Hanging Folders come in boxes of 25 olive green, blue, yellow, orange, red, bright green and violet and assorted colors (all of the previous except olive and violet) and in boxes of 20 in pink in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Meanwhile, Smead created FasTab Hanging Folders with 1/3 cut oversized, reinforced labeling 
surfaces that look like jumbo manila folder tabs–they’re 20% larger than standard non-hanging folder label tabs. You can’t lose the tab because it’s all part of the folder, there’s no plastic involved, and there’s no struggling with those flimsy inserts.
However, there’s a limit to how many times the tab can be relabeled without losing aesthetic appeal, particularly if you tend to hand-write labels, whether with a pencil, pen or Sharpie. Plus, if you prefer using a label maker and affixing label tape, one imagines the structural integrity of the tab will have an only slightly longer life than that of a typical internal folder, unless you plan to layer label upon label as categories change.
FasTab Hanging Folders come in boxes of 20 moss, red, yellow, green, or blue and in boxes of 18 assorted colors. For those who prefer uniformity, they also come in boxes of 20 right-tab-only folders, in moss.
Both of the Big Guys’ solutions seek to reinvent the hanging folder, but a newcomer to this year’s expo reinvented the filing tab, itself.
Filertek Dry Erase Hanging File Tab, from Australia’s The Pencil Grip, Inc., is a new plastic hanging file tab with its own patented built-in writing surface. It obviates any need to keep track of those little perforated labels onto which it can be so hard to write. 
With Filertek, you write directly on the tab with a dry erase pen, flip down the little visor-like cover (available in clear or assorted colors) and click it closed. Then, attach to hanging folders as normal. To reuse, simply flip the cover up, wipe the tab clean and create a new label. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Paper Doll likes the fact that the tabs aren’t made of that sharp, awkward stuff used for traditional plastic tabs. However, it is still plastic, so for those of you trying to answer the paper vs. plastic question for yourself, I can only suggest that these tabs will remain both aesthetically and functionally pleasing for longer than the traditional tabs. Of course, those icky tabs are free with the purchase of traditional hanging folders, while Filertek involves an additional purchase.
Filertek comes in packages of five color tabs, as well as packages of one dozen tabs and 50 tabs (white or assorted colors), each with a special odor-free, black Filertek dry erase pen.
HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE
The Get It Together Life In a Box was created by Hallie Hawkins, an attorney, and Shay Prosser, a financial planner. In the past, vendors have displayed numerous boxed hanging file systems at the NAPO conference. The main difference with this system is the expertise of the two women who have created a company centered around providing independent legal and financial education.
Their workshops and mentoring programs focus on subjects like credit report review and cash flow analysis, retirement and estate planning, understanding benefits, avoiding identity theft, and legal planning. From this, they developed a tangible system for handling the essential documents of life: birth and death certificates, wills, emergency information, insurance policies, car titles and property deeds…and all of the other VIP (Very Important Papers) we talk about here on a regular basis.
Life in a Box includes:
- Life in a Box Guide — This is a guide to the legal and financial reasoning behind the Life in a Box system, particularly useful for those attempting to organize their personal documents and information for the first time, perhaps without the assistance of a professional organizer.
- How to Get It Together — Today!, a 50+ page book of advice on financial and legal issues ranging from handling cash flow to estate planning.
- 30 labeled hanging file folders for maintaining financial and legal records — This system is pre-labeled with the specific document types one might forget. Thus, instead of an umbrella folder for legal documents, the system specifies will, Power of Attorney, Health Care Directive, etc. so that users can identify which specific legal or financial documents may be missing.
- A sturdy box for safely storing the paperwork
Pricing depends largely on the box type or system level selected, with price points ranging from $50 to $175. The basic Life in a Box uses a sturdy plastic file box with a flip-top lid, while the Executive version comes in a brown leatherette box with a velvety interior. For more security, the Life in a Box SuperSecure is housed in a black Vaultz cabinet with a combination lock, while the Fireproof SuperSecure includes a light grey Sentry-brand file box, fireproof up to 1550 Fahrenheit.
There’s also an Out of the Box version of Life in the Box for those who want all of the information and pre-defined folder labels but intend to store the information in their own pre-existing filing cabinet or storage system.
The physical system for the Life in a Box is not new, of course. It’s a container, file folders and labels — just like those we’ve reviewed previously. However, the added elements, including the financial and legal information provided by experts in their fields, are a novel twist.
HANGING OUT IN STYLE
Gear Pockets and Simply Stashed, under the Christy Designs umbrella, don’t make products for organizing paper, but last year, after I shared my delight about them with my newsletter readers, I realized they were too good to keep secret. And let’s face it, if you’re organized, you’ll save those little green pieces of paper.
When I first heard about Simply Stashed, it was described to me as being “like an over-the-door shoe organizer, but prettier and kinda cool”. To be honest, there’s a lot I could (and will) say about this aesthetically-appealing tool for vertical storage, but that description really hits the high points.
Each Simply Stashed is fully lined with eco-friendly fabrics for easy cleaning and double-stitched with transparent pockets in a variety of sizes, depending on the model chosen, with a charming selection of colors and patterns, including florals, dots, petals and geometric shapes: 
The Original Stash is 19″ wide by 52″ long, running almost the full-length of a door to maximize vertical storage space without using up limited depth of space. All twenty pockets are identically sized and placed in five rows of four clear pockets. It’s suitable for storing everything from children’s clothes to accessories (belts, hosiery, etc.) to outerwear items (hats, gloves, scarves, etc.). The Variety Stash, pictured above (right), measures similarly, but has 14 differently sized pockets, to enable you to store items of mixed sizes, like school supplies, crafts, and more.
One of my clients installed the Original Stash inside a hall closet and used it to store a cornucopia of modern electronic supplies: chargers for cell phones, cameras, and video cameras, extra chargers and supplies for e-readers, tablet computers, handheld video games and more, plus battery packs for various devices. With each pocket labeled, there’s never any question as to whose device is where.
There’s also a Mini-Stash, 19″ wide by 36″ long, suitable for smaller spaces (like dorm rooms, small offices, and bathrooms) that can store jewelry, hair and other beauty accessories, or baby supplies tidily. There are five rows of three pockets, each, with the center column pockets slightly wider than the outer, flanking, pockets.
The Original and Variety run $29.95; the Mini is $26.95.
Gear Pockets, the sturdier “brother” line, is suited for garage, mud room and utility room storage of sports paraphernalia, gardening tools and “tough guy” stuff. Made of heavy duty 600 Denier polyester, with gussetted, industrial strength mesh, the 26″ wide by 48″ long Gear Pockets have rust-free stainless steel grommets positioned at 16″ and 24″ (to align with studs) and come with mounting hardware. Gear Pockets come in three styles — the Organizer and Sportsman styles, below,
To receive a 10% discount on Simply Stashed or Gear Pockets, use the coupon code BESTRESULTS at checkout. (In the interest of full disclosure, as a member of the affiliate program, I’ll get brownie points if you make a purchase using that code. But hey, you get 10% off just for being a Paper Doll reader!)
Next week, we’ll finish our look back at the 2011 NAPO expo with intriguing, creative products that are just what you never knew you wanted!
Paper Doll Post:
Follow Me