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?

We have two new entries in our periodic Paper Doll series of reviews of items provided by online office supply purveyor Shoplet.

The Clipboard

Recently, I had the opportunity to try out the Officemate Recycled Plastic Landscape Clipboard. In all my years as an organizer (and many, many years as a school supply aficionado and office supply addict), I’d seen a wide variety of colors and materials (plastic, metal, wood, pressboard, etc.) used in making attractive clipboards.

But the one constant was that clipboards were always arrayed vertically. Portrait (or uppy-downy), clipboards have always been standard, so I was happy to explore the idea of a landscape (side-to-side) clipboard.

The Officemate Recycled Landscape Clipboard is designed to hold and display horizontal documents, like calendars, spreadsheets and storyboards. The clipboard itself is 12″ wide by 9″ high and designed to hold standard 8″ x 11″ paper (but horizontally).

The board is made of a smooth, recycled plastic (consisting of 60% post-consumer recycled materials). The metal clip includes a metal backing riveted to the board; the lift-up clip has plastic-coated corners to keep papers in place without tugging, tearing, or making that awful metal-on-metal squeaking sound.

A small metal tab lifts up from between the metal backing and the board to serve as a hanger; the top of the tab is bent at 90° so it lays flat against the top of the board when unused. 

The clip capacity is marketed as approximately 1/2″ of paper, but I was able to safely clip a 3/4″ thick phone directory without difficulty.

At Shoplet, the Officemate Recycled Landscape Clipboard is $6.54/each, or $6.21/each for four or more (or $3.46 in bulk, for 72 clipboards or more).

In addition to using the landscape clipboard for general paperwork and projects, it seems like it would be an ideal solution for children’s artwork. Kids tend to draw their pictures in landscape orientation, so packing the clipboard, some paper and crayons in a bag means little artists can set up their studios wherever you go. Once you get home, lift the metal tab at the top of the clipboard to display the artwork from any nail or hook. (Of course, if you manage to find a small, desktop-style easel, the clipboard makes a perfect backing for the pint-sized canvas.)

My favorite aspect of the clipboard, besides the novelty and utility of the landscape design, was the low-profile metal clip. The biggest annoyance I find with clipboards is that most metal clips are high-profile, meaning they stick out and do not lay flat. This makes it hard to put the clipboard in a backpack or to stack other clipboards or files on top without risking lumpiness or sliding. With the Officemate clipboard, you could easily carry a stack without worrying about sliding or lumpy, damaged papers.

The main thing I didn’t like about the clipboard was the packaging. The cellophane appears to have been wrapped around the board before the clip portion was riveted on, so when I went to tear off the wrapping, bits of it still stuck out from between the clip and the board, both at the front and the rear. I also found the metal hanger tab to be a bit rattle-y when I was carrying the clipboard around. (Caveat: I talk with my hands, even when they’re full.)

While the utilitarian style (or lack thereof) of the clipboard didn’t bother me, I know some of you prefer snazzier office supplies. Paper Doll isn’t the crafty type, and wouldn’t know what to do with Modge Podge, decoupage or scrapbooking flair, and I’ve happily used the same clipboard (with a squeaky metal clip and solid pressboard backing) for a million years. But to gain a little motivation and some fun ideas for decorating clipboards, check out:

• Tip Junkie’s 25 Ways To Organize It With a Clipboard
• The Crafty Quilter’s Decorating & Organizing with Clipboards Tutorial
• Decorative Clipboards on Pinterest

Clipboards are a great way to help keep yourself organized when notebooks, folders and loose papers just won’t do. A few useful ways to organize with clipboards include:

1) Running errands — When you want to keep a running to-do list along with the items you’ll need at each location (dry cleaning ticket, receipts for items to be returned, discount postcards for oil changes, forms to turn in to your accountant, etc.), it’s often easier to clip everything to a clipboard in the order in which you’ll arrive at the locations to use them.

2) Big picture projects — Whiteboards and chalkboard-painted walls are good vertical solutions for keeping track of projects and tasks, but they’re not very mobile. Post a row of clipboards just above eye-level, and use label maker tape to put the project title along the metal clip. You’ll see at a glance which project clipboard you need. Grab and go!

3) Shopping lists (for groceries, holidays, etc.) — While lots of shoppers prefer to keep digital lists in their phones, some people like the tactile aspect of keeping track of lists and writing notes (about prices, brands, sizes, etc.) as they go along. The problem is that it’s hard to write neatly on a loose piece of paper. Clipping a full-size set of lists to a clipboard means you have a built-in hard surface for taking notes and checking off items as you find them. Hang your clipboard in the kitchen or pantry, add items to your shopping list, and then take the whole board with you.

4) Task and Chore Charts — Assign chores to your kids (and any grownups who act like kids) by having a clipboard for each member of the house. Write tasks on large index cards and clip them to the appropriate family member’s board so they can grab and go, taking the tasks and instructions with them.

5) A Week of Calendars — Some families have so much activity going on that a big, monthly wall calendar can’t show the level of detail that’s needed. Try hanging a row of clipboards (even mini-clipboards) in the mud room or entry way listing all the major events of the day. Everyone can see at a glance what’s on the schedule (who’s driving carpool, whether it’s soccer practice or play rehearsal, and whether Grandma’s coming for dinner) so Mom and Dad don’t have to field the same questions over and over.

What other tasks can you tackle in a more organized way by using clipboards? And what do you think of the landscape clipboard?

The Desk Organizer

It’s my belief that there’s no perfect desktop organizer caddy. Often, the ones that are gorgeous or adorable are imbalanced or impractical. Personally, Paper Doll likes to keep her office supplies in a desk drawer, categorized and separated by dividers, but mainly hidden away. When I do set up an office with a desktop organizer, practicality trumps fashion. The essential question is, does it work without annoying the user?

Even if it didn’t have any other positive attributes (and it does), the Officemate OIC Versa Plus Functional Desk Organizer would have to win an award for having the longest darned name of any office supply I’ve seen!

This black, plastic organizer is 5 1/2″ high, 6.2″ wide and 6.3″ deep. (Unlike the clipboard above, the plastic is not recycled.) It has three levels and nine zones, including a few surprises:

• At the rear, two compartments for writing implements, scissors, rulers and any other “tall” office supplies. One compartment runs the full height of the caddy, the other is about 2/3 the height of the taller one (to keep shorter pens and pencils from going missing).
• Moving forward, there’s a vertical paper slot, about 1/2″ thick, perfect for mini-legal pads, documents, pending mail, or envelopes.
• At the front of the vertical slot, facing outward, is a removable clear plastic panel to use as a picture frame. Slide it out, put in a 3″ x 5″ photo (or an index card of your favorite motivational quote) and replace the clear plastic.
• There are three shallow tray compartments in the front; the center one measures 3″ x 3″, perfect for your favorite stack of sticky notes, while the two flanking trays are suitable for tape flags and other tiny items.
• On the lowest level, there are two squat, clear, plastic compartments that swing outward, to the sides (rather than pulling out like drawers).

Here it is, in full-color action:

This organizer is sturdier than I’d have expected from photos. I loaded it down with lots of pens, markers and scissors, but the wide base didn’t jiggle and there was no sign of tipping. I really liked the photo frame (though I’d prefer one with a 4″ x 6″ option, and the swing-out compartments were nifty (and since they’re clear, you don’t risk forgetting what’s inside). I also appreciate that it’s got a small footprint, but manages to pack a lot into that tiny bit of office supply real estate.

I’m not a huge fan of plastic, in general, and while the swing-out doors don’t squeak, the organizer does make a tell-tale “plasticky” sound when moved around on the desktop. I’d have liked to have seen some rubber matting on the base to make it slip- and squeak-proof.

The Officemate OIC Versa Plus Functional Desk Organizer runs $16.46, or $15.64 if you buy four or more.

[Note, for those who care about the provenance of their purchases, both of today’s items are made in China.]

The Officemate Recycled Plastic Landscape Clipboard and Desk Organizer are available directly from Shoplet, which also maintains a colorful and often-goofy blog about office supplies. Shoplet is also a source for business promotional products, including promotional shirts. In addition to selling office supplies in North America, Shoplet is a purveyor of office stationery in the UK.

Disclosure: I received these products for review purposes only, and was given no monetary compensation. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?) The clipboard and desk organizer will be donated to a Chattanooga-area non-profit and/or used for pro-bono organizing projects.