Best Results Organizing

Image by emil_erv from Pixabay 

Dearest Paper Doll Readers, if you’ve stuck with this Noteworthy Notebook series so far, you’ve seen a wide variety of options, low tech to high tech. Some had advantages due to format or customizability, others because they could integrate digital storage (or even digital capture) while letting you stick with analog handwriting writing.

Today’s post is a little different. We’re going low-tech. You might even say we’re going back to nature. You could even say we’re going back to the Stone Age! This post looks at notebooks that are designed less for how you organize your writing experience, but more for how what you write can stay organized (and legible) while leading a rough-and-tumble lifestyle.

This isn’t the first time we’ve looked at these kinds of solutions. For example, Sticky to the Extreme: Organizing Information in Extreme Situations with Post-it® Extreme Notes looked at how to keep track of important information when you’re dealing with a hot, humid kitchen or a blizzard-exposed fuse-box.

But it’s been almost a decade since we looked at any kind of super-strong notebooks to keep your writing safe from rain, snow, sleet, dark of night, or biting dogs. So, basically, these notebooks should be as dependable as your postal carrier, recent news coverage notwithstanding. Maybe as dependable as THIS mailman?

ON THE ROCKS

These notebooks are less on the rocks and more made of rocks. Stone, that is. Most notebooks are made of paper, which is made from trees, but as far back as 2010, I was sharing environmentally-friendly resources about paper made from wheat, recycled newspaper, (elephant and sheep) poop, and yes, stone.

Notebooks made of stone paper have distinct advantages. Made from stone “waste” (no, rocks don’t poop), the pages of stone notebooks are:

Tear-resistant – Typical paper made from wood pulp tears easily, but almost never where and when you want it to. (Ever try to tear cheap notebook paper along a perforation? It tears everywhere except along the perforation!) Stone paper isn’t made out of Superman’s cape, but it’s hearty, sturdy enough to stand up to typical accidental rip-and-tear events.

Waterproof – If you, your tiny human, or your pets have a habit of knocking over glasses or bottles, you know that once soaked, paper dries “wrinkly” and no longer provides a smooth writing surface. If you and your traditional (pulp/cellulose) notebook get caught in the rain, the edges will warp. Stone paper can generally withstand not only water, but also colored beverages, like coffee, tea, juice, or wine. Just wipe it off!
 
Thicker –  Cheap, easily-tearable (my, how that sounds like “easily terrible!”) paper notebooks can be thin, so ink soaks through, making it difficult to write on both sides of the paper. Thicker stone paper keeps your writing where you put it, doubling the usability of your pages.

Smoother – Almost every description of stone paper uses some variation on the word velvety. This makes for a more luxurious writing experience. If you’d like to treat yourself to some luxury after a year+ of sourdough starters and sweatpants, a stone notebook might be appealing.

Kinder to the environment – Traditional paper cuts down trees and requires a lot (and I mean a LOT) of water, chlorine, and petroleum to manufacture. Stone paper is generally made from calcium carbonate (yes, the stuff in your antacids), which is a super-common substance found many places on earth: as byproducts of limestone and water in quarries and in eggshells, (beach) shells, and pearls. Even before it was used to make actual paper, stone waste powder had been used to make other paper brighter and whiter. (Yes, so basically your strand of pearls is a proto-Tide Pod!)

How does stone become paper?

Of course, there are disadvantages to stone notebooks as well.

Ink limitations – With all stone notebooks, traditional ballpoint pens and pencils work fine, but gel inks apparently aren’t so stone-friendly and are very slow to dry. (This is sad news for Paper Doll, who has almost exclusively used Pentel Energel metal point pens for 30 years.) For fountain pen fans, there’s a bit of a mixed bag. Fancy-pants fountain pen inks are similarly slow to dry. On the down side, you’ll have a long wait before you can turn the page or accidentally brush against it. On the up side, because the velvety smooth paper takes longer to absorb the ink, it’s less likely to bleed through to the reverse.

Less color uniformity or bright whiteness – Because stone paper is made from different kinds of stones, the colors of the paper may vary. Some notebooks may be bright white, others more buttery, others more like dove grey. If the exact whiteness/brightness of your notebooks matters to you, you’ll want to test out your options.

Not all of a stone notebook is manufactured to the benefit of the environment – First, unlike when minerals like calcium carbonate are used to make the coating of paper, to make a whole sheet of paper, the minerals are ground into powder so fine that it must be mixed with something to give it structural integrity, and in most cases, that’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE). In other words, plastic. Second, even when the paper in a notebook is made of stone, other features, including covers, bookmarks, elastic penholders, etc., maybe made out of less environmentally-friendly substances. Caveat emptor.

A quick Googling will turn up oodles of stone notebook options for you to explore. In this post, I’ve presented just a few that seem particularly appealing, either aesthetically or due to cost or other unique features.

NANOBOOK

Let’s start with the teeniest, most adorable option. The original Nanobook, developed in the UK by Plei Design, started its life as a successfully crowdsourced Kickstarter campaign in 2019. The tough stone notebook billed itself as: waterproof, oilproof, mudproof, greaseproof, weatherproof, toddlerproof, sweatproof, hackerproof, and fire-resistant. (Well, stones don’t catch on fire, so I guess that makes sense!)

Designed to be small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand, at 1.97″ (5 cm) wide x 3.15″ (8 cm) high, with a spiral binding across the top, it’s like a mini assignment notebook (and assignment notebooks are already pretty tiny). 

Keep it in your glove compartment or with your bird-watching gear, in your camping bag, or wherever you’ll be out of doors and at one with nature. (A reminder, Paper Doll prefers the in-of-doors and is decidedly at two with nature.)

But the real appeal of the Nanobook is that you can write with anything – a pencil, a pen, or even a key if you have no actual writing implement on hand.

This past spring, the company ran a successful campaign for their new Nanobook 3, with a fire-resistant, Grade 5 titanium cover. 

Because their Nanobook 3 campaign just shipped, I suggest you watch their Facebook page for their  next iteration and purchase availabilities.

KARST STONE PAPER

Australia’s Karst is a new kind of company, one Certified as a B Corporation, described as “new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good.” (They join companies you probably know, like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Allbirds, and Cabot Cheese.)

Karst sells a wide variety of premium luxury notebooks, notepads, pocket- and full-sized journals, planners, action pads (task and calendar planning notepads), and sketchpads, all made from stone paper. (You can also custom-order any color, style, logo, and cover message you want, if you’d like to personalize a notebook for yourself or gifts for your team or clients.)

Rather than getting overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety of options on their products page, head to the Discover page to get walked through a series of selection options and achieve the A5 stone notebook of your dreams, all for $24.99. 

Cover: Soft or hard faux leather cover? 

Cover Colors: if you picked a soft-cover notebook, your choices are Navy, Stone, or Black. Your selection is wider for hard covers, giving you the additional choices of Glacier (light blue), Eucalypt (green), Pinot (red) and Dune (sandy pink).

Paper Layout: Karst offers four layout styles for notebooks, including 6 mm ruled, blank, 5 mm dot-grid, or 5 mm grid/graph.  

No matter which of the Karst thread-bound, lay-flat, A5 options you choose, the notebooks have 144 pages of 120-micron thick paper (equivalent to 100 gsm). The notebooks have an expandable, rear interior pocket and a stretchy bookmark ribbon.

Aside from the sumptuous cover colors (and the notepads, journals, and planners all come in an even wider variety of hues), what struck me about these stone notebooks is the eminent reasonableness of the pricing.

All of the paper products (except the $30 sketchpad) seem to range between $9 and $25. (Be sure to adjust the currency option at the top right of the page to reflect US dollars rather than Australian dollars, British pounds, or Euros.)

TRUE COOKS

Do you spend a lot of time in a professional kitchen, or one just as chaotic? 

True Cooks is a lifestyle brand for chefs, and sells apparel, books, and accessories for the professional cook. 

The TrueCooks Stone Paper Notebook offers all of the features of a typical stone notebook, but of particular interest to chefs, it’s waterproof and greaseproof, so the paper won’t shrivel and the writing (whether via pencil, pen, or Sharpie) won’t run.

The notebook is 5.35″ wide x 8.46″ and .78″ thick. The site does not mention the number of pages, but does note that they alternate between lined and blank, and are perforated so that a chef can quickly tear out a shopping list or recipe. Inside the notebook, there’s a conversion chart for easy, accurate measuring of ingredients. 

The black cover is described as durable and “vegan,” which usually means faux-leather, and the binding allows the book to lay flat without damaging the spine. There’s an attached elastic penholder.

The True Cooks’ Stone Paper Notebook costs $29 at their site.

OXFORD STONE PAPER NOTEBOOKS

Are you in the mood for something a little more casual? Oxford, from the same Tops Products family of office and school supplies as Pendaflex and Ampad, has a tear- and water-resistant stone notebook of its own.

The Oxford Stone Notebooks come in two sizes, 8 1/2″ x 11″ and 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″. Both notebook sizes have blue covers and 60 sheets of college-ruled stone paper. They’re bound by double-wire (Wire-O) binding, but unusually, only in two sets of four double-loops at the top and bottom of the notebook. There’s nothing about it in the sales copy, but I think this extra non-wired space makes it much easier to write on the page that’s opposite your dominant arm. (Yay for lefties!)

On the Oxford site, the stone notebooks are priced by the single notebook but only available in multiples of 12 or 24, so I suggest you purchase elsewhere unless you run your own school or non-small company. At Amazon, you can purchase two-packs of the large notebook for $14.60, but the smaller notebook is currently unavailable. Staples also carries the Oxford Stone Notebooks singly, $6.29 for the smaller notebook and $11.79 for the larger one. 

STONE JOURNAL

Stone Journal Co takes the concept of the True Cooks notebook and runs with it, designing whole product lines themed for those in culinary careers. Their story? Stuck on a train after a shoot with one of the UK’s best chefs, they wondered why no-one had created a notebook tailor-made for chefs, and from there sent their original prototype to 100 Michelin-starred chefs in the UK, US, Japan and Australia for feedback.

Their $22 A5 hardcover stone notebooks come in five versions:

Classic (for chefs) – 144 perforated pages of alternating ruled and blank paper with a “vegan” cover in brown, red, or black, with an interior, rear, expanding pocket, an elastic closure, and pen holder. The notebook has a lay-flat design, and two satin ribbons for bookmarks. There are conversion pages for weight, volume, temperature, liquids and sugars in back page.

Bartender – the 144 pages are plain on the right and dot-grid on the left, not perforated, but otherwise have most of the features of the Classic, but different resource pages, including “spirit” (as in alcohol) maps, conversions for temperatures, volumes, and bar measurements, syrup and fruit/acid ratio graphs, and pages with the history of various cocktails. The faux leather covers come in green and black.

Barista – 144 alternating grid, ruled, and blank pages, plus everything a coffee aficionado wants to know, including harvest schedules, varietal trees, extraction guides and a comprehensive flavor wheel. The cover is a faux leather, in glossy black.

Sommelier – with all of the main features as the Classic, the pages alternate blank and ruled, but the resource pages include wine maps form 45 regions, a flavor wheel, and grape profiles with infographics for 16 red and 16 white grape varietals. The faux leather cover is a matte black.

Brewers – This has all of the features of the Sommelier version, but a tan faux leather cover and different resources: water profiles for beer styles, gravity and bitterness ranges, flavor wheels, conversions and key equations for making beer.

Rounding out their line of stone notebooks, they also have: saddle-stitched, passport-sized Memo notebooks for $9; an A6 Pocket notebook (4 1/8″ x 5 7/8″) with most of the same features (including the perforated pages) as the Classic, but with a semi-flexible binding, for $16; and a Travel notebook, similar to the Classic, but with illustrated country maps and a four-year datebook, for $22.

[Unfortunately, due to supply-chain issues, most of these notebooks won’t be available again until December, but they’d make such great gifts, it’s worth it to make a note to circle back around in a few months when you’re doing holiday shopping.]

SKIPPING STONES ABROAD?

If you’re reading from somewhere other than North America (or comfortable ordering in Euros and having products shipped to you here), I recommend you look a few of these Europe-based options.

Ogami’s Repap Stone Notebooks

Paper Doll has been studying Italian for more than three years, but I’m relieved that Ogami has an English-translation version of their site, so I can tell you without consulting il mio dizionario that their 100% tree-free products use no water during the manufacturing process and no petroleum products, chlorine, or acids. This reduces energy consumption by 85% vs. pulp/cellulose paper production and has a 67% smaller carbon footprint.

Ogami has three styles of stone notebooks for you to explore:

Hardcover with 128 pages, in black, grey, green, or white covers with blank, ruled, and graph page options. They’re sized as: mini (90 mm x 140 mm), small (130 mm x 210 mm), and regular (195 mm x 240 mm), for 16, 20, and 24 Euros, respectively.

Softcover, with 48, 64, or 80 pages for mini, small, and regular (and all the options as above, except no graph paper), for 8, 12, and 15 Euros. As an alternative to the serious professional colors, you can choose among eight very Italian (and 1960’s-feeling) patterns/messages.

Wirebound comes in regular (195 mm x 240mm) only, with black, grey, green, or white covers or one of four “artistic” color/message combinations, Wire-O binding, and 80 pages of either graph/grid or ruled, for 18 Euros. 

Roca Stonepaper Notebooks

Roca, based in Lithuania (but with a very English-language friendly website), has lovely limestone powder notebooks in hardcover A5 (5.8″ x 8.3″) with 144 dot-grid, lined, or blank pages in indigo or muscat (light pink) for 14.99 Euros (about $17.81 right now).

Roca’s A5 paperback cover journal has 64 blank pages and comes in grey, green, indigo, or muscat for 5.99 Euros (~$7.12). Their A6 pocket journal, about passport size (4.1″ x 5.8”) is also 64 pages and comes in the same colors for 4.99 Euros (~$5.94). (The A6 “Colorful” comes in a variety of 10 different watercolor covers for the same price.)

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Whether you want a velvety-smooth writing surface or your life demands notebook needs to be waterproof, tear-resistant, and, dare I say it, flame-resistant, stone paper notebooks are an intriguing option.  Click To Tweet

Whether you want a velvety-smooth writing surface or you lead the kind of life where you need your writing surface to be waterproof, tear-resistant, and, dare I say it, flame-resistant, stone paper notebooks offer an intriguing option. 

I’ll meet you back here next week for our continuing (but almost complete) world of organizing your notebook life. If you’ve missed any of the series so far, you can catch up here:

Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 1): Re-Surveying the Landscape
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 2): The Big Names in Erasable Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 3): More Erasable & Reusable Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 4): Modular, Customizable, Disc-Based Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 5): Customize with Magnets, Hooks, and Apps
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 6): Get Smart (Notebooks)