Best Results Organizing

Have you ever noticed how looking at something from a different angle can make all the difference? Being organized means having the right tools for the job, and sometimes, with paper, fiddling with the wrong size or orientation can cause frustration and procrastination. Finding the right resources can be tricky, but is definitely worth the effort.

Last week, I mentioned my delight at finding the Officemate OIC Recycled Landscape Plastic Clipboard. A number of my colleagues and other readers jumped in to mention their surprise regarding the novelty of landscape clipboards. Although landscape-formatted clipboards are definitely as much a rarity as portrait (vertical) file folders, we’ve found even more options for those of you who seek a little more elbow room.

Landscape Clipboards

In addition to last week’s recycled Officemate clipboard, there’s also the Officemate OIC Klip N File Landscape Filing Clipboard. It’s a little different from what we’ve seen before, and while it is a clipboard, it’s not only a clipboard.

At 12 1/2″ x 9 1/2″ and .8″ thick, this landscape clipboard is made of charcoal molded plastic and has a low-profile metal clip. As with the clipboard we reviewed last week, the clip has rubber-coated corners to allow it to hold papers firmly without ripping, tearing or squeaking, and a metal lift-up tab in case you wish to hang the clipboard vertically, from a nail or hook. (Unlike last week’s clipboard, the Klip N File is not made of any recycled materials.)

The Klip N File has two additional features of interest. First, an elastic band, similar to (though narrower than) the kind attached to Moleskine notebooks, helps keep papers in place, rather than flapping in the wind.

Perhaps more intriguingly, this landscape clipboard is designed so that it can be used like a traditional clipboard (on display or while mobile) or integrated into a filing system. It has built-in hangers, like you see with hanging folders, for storage in a file cabinet or desktop file box. Along the top edge of the clipboard, the hangers are elevated at an angle, allowing them to bear adhesive labels (included) for filing with traditional folders.

The Klip N File ranges widely in price, from $8.58 at Shoplet to $13.59 at Amazon.

Officemate isn’t the only game in town for landscape clipboards, but it does seem that the horizontal formatting is more popular everywhere else in the world. (Officemate manufactures theirs in China.) For example, the 220-year-old Lion Office Products, a Japanese company, has two landscape alternatives.

Lion’s Landscape Post-Consumer Recycled Plastic Clipboard comes in blue plastic in either of two sizes, 11″ x 14 7/8″ and 11″ x 17″ for extended paper sizes. It’s only .6″ thick.

The low-profile one-touch steel lever clamp holds up to approximately 180 sheets of paper, and you can hang the clipboard on a hole drilled into the plastic above the clip. Lion’s clipboards are made of 96.8% post-consumer recycled plastic PET bottles. The larger version is available from Amazon for about $24.

German company Veloflex offers an A3 Landscape Clipboard measuring, 18.3″ x 12.4″. It’s very similar to last week’s Officemate model, only instead of plastic, it’s made of a black (bumpy) linen-styled material. The metal clip has black plastic-coated corners and will hold 100 sheets, and the clip’s backing hides a pull-up hanging tab.

The Veloflex clipboard is available from Amazon.co.UK for $26.

For someone seeking a super-stylish landscape clipboard, Detectables Online, a UK company specializing in food industry products carries a kitchen/catering aluminum option:

At 12 1/4″ x 10 1/4″, this snazzy clipboard is only 1.5mm thick and bears a low-profile clip with rubber-coated corners. The clipboard is designed to lay tilted on flat surfaces or can be hung from the curved 1 5/8″ backing. It sells for about $18 from the Detectables site.

The most interesting alternative landscape clipboard I found was at the Waterproof Clipboard Store, which specializes in hooded clipboards for use in inclement weather. (We covered a similar need in Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks a few years ago.) For example, you might want a covered clipboard for outdoor professions from land surveying to archeology, to mobile tasks like keeping outdoor delivery or maintenance records, to hobbies like sports scorekeeping, coaching/playbook review and nature surveying.

The A3 Landscape RainWriter is a waterproof clipboard for use in the yuckiest weather circumstances and is especially suited for working with larger papers such as home or landscape (no pun intended) plans. The RainWriter has a spring-loaded plastic cover for use in the rain or in other high-moisture environments. The cover can be folded flat and there are two clips on the reverse side to enable use as a standard clipboard in dry weather. There are two pen holders on the inside of the cover.

The RainWriter is designed for use with UK paper formats. (A3, for example, is 420mm x 297mm, or close to 16.5″ x 11.7″.) The A3 Landscape RainWriter runs $47; there’s also an A4 Landscape RainWriter for $40.

So, landscape clipboards are great when you’ve got spreadsheets, blueprints or other horizontally-arrayed documents. But what about when you just want to take notes on a wider canvas?

Aside from the penmanship paper elementary school kids used for learning cursive (you know, the kind with chunks of twigs sticking out from them), landscape paper options have been fairly hard to come by.

Landscape Writing Pads

A conversation about landscape clipboards with colleagues Nanette Duffy and Lauren Halagarda  led to this:

Indeed! It’s also the new pastel! For a writing pad fan like Paper Doll,, what could be cooler than Running Spring’s line of WIDE LandscapePads?

The college-ruled, perforated, 11“ x 9 1/2“ pads have 40 sheets to a pad and come individually or in three-pad packs of white, canary yellow, or pink/orchid/blue assortments. There’s also a “5×5” graph paper version, in the same size and sheet numbers, and a “junior size” WIDE pad assortment pack in 8″ x 6″. All fit well on landscape-orientation clipboards, but thanks to the standard chipboard backing, work equally well board-free. (Roaring Spring only sells by the case, so check them out at Amazon, Office Max and other office supply stores for individual pricing options.)

Spend a lot of time writing on airplanes? You know that the lip of airline trays make it hard to keep your writing pad surface from being “lumpy” — but that’s not a problem with these wide pads. Roaring Spring notes the WIDE pads are “ideal for standard and scientific notetaking” and since the pads match computer screen dimensions, it’s suitable for IT/coding when you can’t get to the computer. And honestly, sometimes horizontal is just better suited for the writing/planning task.

What do you think of these landscape clipboards and pads? Do you know of any other fabulous but atypical landscape-orientation office supplies? How might you use these differently from traditional clipboards and writing pads?