Paper Doll
Paper Doll On Paperless vs. Less Paper: Send To Kindle, iPrint & Paperless Post
Paper is here to stay. The promised paperless office (or paperless life) is a fantasy. But paper efficiency — less paper — is certainly possible. Previously, we’ve talked about paper-reduction and environmentally-friendly options. Today, I’d like to offer a round-up of some new and trending alternatives.
SEND TO KINDLE
Although Kindle e-readers are primarily designed to allow you to download books you’ve purchased or borrowed, owners have pretty much always been able to get other documents onto their Kindles. The problem was that it was a little inconvenient to do so.
Let’s say your team has a work document in Word that’s finally ready for review, but you don’t really want to schlep your laptop on vacation. Maybe you were really hoping to review it in bits and pieces — at lunch, in the waiting room, or while sitting in the carpool lane. Previously, you could have printed the document, which works fine for five pages, but becomes progressively unwieldy at 500 pages, not to mention the impact on the environment, the cost of ink and paper, and the time dealing with loading paper, paper jams and collating the pile once the ceiling fan or the kids or the pets get all the pages out of order.
When Kindle came along, it yielded another option. You could mail any PDF to your personalized Kindle account (or move a PDF from your hard drive to your Kindle via USB cable). All you had to do was turn your document into a PDF.
The problem was that although turning something into a PDF on Mac is ridiculously easy (just click “Print” and select “Save as PDF”), creating PDFs on PCs always involved a few extra steps. To turn a document on your PC into a PDF, you needed to use a third party converter like Cute PDF, PDF Creator, or PDF Printer for Windows 7.)
Once you have a PDF, getting it to your Kindle isn’t that hard:
1) Log into your Amazon account and select Manage Your Kindle. Under Manage Your Devices, you’ll see your Kindle email address at Kindle.com.
2) Add your regular email address to your Kindle “approved” list (just this first time) under Personal Document Settings.
3) From your email account, create a new email. Attach the PDF and put CONVERT in the subject line.
4) Send the email to your Kindle.com address.
5) Turn your Kindle on, and Whispernet should deliver it within a moment.
(Send the PDF to your Kindle via USB by copying the document from your computer to your Kindle, just as you’d do with any attached hard drive, flash drive or device.)
Whew. As you can see, none of this was particularly onerous, but it involved quite a few steps, especially for PC owners.
Amazon’s Send To Kindle makes the process much easier. Amazon released Send to Kindle for PC in January, and just released Send to Kindle for Mac a few weeks ago. The app is free, and lets you easily send any of your documents from your computer to your Kindle devices as well as to any supported Kindle reading applications on your computer or smart phone, and also lets you store the documents in your Kindle Library (giving you some extra backup).
If You’re A PC:
Send to Kindle for PC is compatible with Windows 7, XP, and Vista. It’s also supported on Kindle for Android (version 3.5 or greater) and the Kindle App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Once downloaded, you can transfer files by either of two methods:
- From Windows Explorer, right-click on one or more documents and select Send to Kindle.
- From within any Windows application that allows printing, select Print and choose Send to Kindle. (Documents will be delivered in a PDF format.)
If You’re A Mac:
Send to Kindle for Mac is only compatible with Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion), so if you’re still running Tiger or Leopard, you’re stuck with the old methods. For Kindle reading applications, it’s supported on Kindle for Android (v. 3.5 or above) and the Kindle App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Once downloaded and installed, you’ll be able to move PDFs to your Kindle quickly and easily in any of three ways:
- Drag and Drop one or more documents onto the Send to Kindle icon in your Dock (or launch the application and then drag and drop one or more documents on to it).
- Print — from any Mac application, select Print, then choose Send to Kindle
- From the Finder, select one or more documents, Control-Click, and select Send to Kindle.
Not Just PDFs
You don’t have to convert documents to PDFs first. You can also send Microsoft Word document (in .doc or .docx formats) and various file formats, including .txt, .rtf, .jpeg or .jpg, .gif, .png, and .bmp, which Send to Kindle automatically converts to PDF.
REDUCE PRINTING BY INCREASING PAGES PER SHEET
Most of the time, when you DO want to print a piece of paper, it makes sense to print one page per sheet. But there are instances — say, when you want to print copies of PowerPoint slides, preview the layout of a series of pages in a big document, or create little cheat sheets — when printing multiple pages to one sheet of paper might be nice.
Your printer’s Print function can probably handle this fairly easily. On my Mac, from the Print screen for my HP Deskjet, I select Layout from the drop-down menu and then have a choice of six different page-per-sheet options:
On a PC, the print options are sometimes dictated by the application you’re using. For Word 2007, for example, select Zoom and under the drop-down menu, select Pages Per Sheet and then, if applicable, select Scale to Paper Size.
Windows XP, 7 and Vista users have a new option: iPrint!
iPrint is a free, downloadable printer driver. It works for any (Windows-based) document, in any format, automatically scaling pages to fit the printed sheet and letting you set up multiple pages (to a maximum of four) to be printed on a single sheet of paper.
What? Only four? I know, that may seem like few, but iPrint has the distinct advantage of automatically deleting blank pages and letting you select unwanted pages for deletion from the printout. (And, let’s face it, if we’re combining pages while hoping to maintain readability, four is probably the limit, anyway.)
Even more interestingly, iPrint improves productivity by allowing you to group print jobs from multiple applications into one iPrint session.
And while the general notions of helping the environment and saving ink and paper costs are nice — iPrint estimates a 30-60% annual savings on printing costs — the service goes that one better. iPrint actually measures, tracks and reports your savings!
iPrint also integrates with Click to Convert, its parent company product, to allow you to “print” to PDF or HTML and eliminate paper printing, altogether.
Once you download and install iPrint as a virtual printer, select your print option, and then choose iPrint as your printer. iPrint then automatically displays the print job, the way you’d normally see it when using the Preview function.
iPrint highlights blank pages in red, and can even detect when a page isn’t totally blank but includes nothing useful, like the final navigation pages if you’re trying to print a web page. (Paper Doll will have an upcoming post on other nifty digital tools to help you save paper when printing from web sites.)
You can opt to un-delete anything iPrint has highlighted simply by double-clicking the page. At the bottom of the screen, iPrint alerts you to how many pages you’ve saved, and in a side-bar, you can then view the document graphically and select how many pages per sheet you’d like to print.
Just the click Print icon, and iPrint prints! Clicking a resulting green button will bring up a report of how many sheets of paper you’ve saved since using iPrint, how many you’ve printed, how much money you’ve saved.
IT’S MY PARTY, AND I’LL GO PAPERLESS IF I WANT TO
There have been digital invitations for a long time now: Evite, Eventbrite, Punchbowl, etc. In most cases, they’ve been straightforward and free. But Paperless Post, founded by siblings James and Alexa Hirschfeld, is different. It’s operated by a seven-person design team creating a vast expanse of templates, from collages to hand-drawn and computer-designed art, and offers something different — pretty online stationery, for a fee.
It’s a simple concept, and yet a little difficult to grasp. Paperless Post’s e-cards purport to look like digital versions of the kinds of formal invitations you’d have printed by a classy stationer. Customers can select from various graphic designers’ collections and customize the card shape, “paper” color, font colors and styles (engraved calligraphy vs. letter-pressed appearance), a card’s “weight”, and even envelope liners (for envelopes you’ll never touch or mail, and which will never be held by your recipients).
So, you can design your perfect card or invitation, personalize it with your own photo or branded logo, and send it in an interactive envelope via Paperless Post (by uploading your contacts to a Paperless Post address book). Then “promote” the contents via Facebook or Twitter, and even maintain a public link to your creation, which you can send via email or post in a blog or newsletter to reach a larger audience. You can even track RSVPs or registrations, Facebook Likes, opens, clicks and attendance.
Card options include party and event invitations, notes and greetings, change of address and birth announcements, save-the-date cards, and holiday cards.
Paperless Post touts that this is all done at a fraction of the price of traditional paper printing — but Paper Doll can’t get past the idea that no matter how lovely it is, it’s no more real than a picture of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. It conveys all of the visual aesthetic — Paperless Post cards are truly gorgeous — but none of the tactile enjoyment.
For a clam bake, I get it. But as pretty as it is, I’m fairly certain Paper Mommy would share my horror at a digital Bar Mitzvah invitation, and I honestly believe the combination of “formal” and “digital” are as suitable as a tuxedo T-shirt. Cute, amusing, but entirely inappropriate for the real thing.
Paper Doll definitely believes that technology, and particularly the advent of tablet computers like the iPad, will eventually mean a dramatic reduction in paper, and in most cases, this is a good thing. But as I noted way back in the classic post, A Valentine to Paper, there are delights that only paper can bring:
Isn’t there still something romantic about a rainy Sunday afternoon spent wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, noodling through old, dog-eared photos and tear-stained love letters? Will our children’s children feel just as warmhearted if they rifle through digital photos and archived emails?
Efficiency is one thing, but you can have my paper when you pry it from my cold, paper-cut covered hands.
Paper Doll Makes a Statement: The Social (Security) Network
One year ago this week, in Social Security Goes Paperless & Gets Lean, Green & A Little Mean, we discussed the modernizing of Social Security, and delved into how the federal government intended to save money by making Social Security go paperless.
Paper Doll reported that new applicants for Social Security could no longer opt to have paper checks mailed and that current recipients would have to transition to electronic payments.
I also reported on another paper-related Social Security issue that I believed might have a profound impact on America’s workers. From 1999 through April 2011, the Social Security Administration had mailed annual statements about twelve weeks prior to each taxpayer’s birthday. At best, these statements prompted (OK, nagged) workers to pay attention to how much money they could realistically, with current figures and legislation, expect to receive in retirement.
At best, this annual mailing provided an opportunity to review the accuracy of one’s Social Security records and to consider what other financial savings and investment instruments would be necessary to thrive in retirement. I say, “at best” because I know that those statements were often ignored, kept haphazardly, or tossed away–and not even shredded! Indeed, a little over two years ago, in Lost and Found: Social Security Statements, I tried to impart the importance of gathering and reviewing annual statements, and replacing missing ones.
As a reminder, in addition to understanding your prospective future retirement benefits, reviewing your Social Security statements serves multiple purposes:
—Identifying under-reporting errors, likely caused by an employer neglecting to provide an accurate 1099 to the IRS
—Identifying over-reporting errors, likely caused by identity theft, wherein someone is fraudulently using your Social Security number to secure employment
—Providing proof (for yourself or your family) that you have qualified to receive Medicare, disability or retirement benefits
THE NEW SOCIAL (SECURITY) ORDER
As I reported last May, the $70 million cost of mailing annual statements to more than 158 million Americans became too much of a financial liability, and the federal government suspended the mailing of paper statements. Unfortunately, the decision caught everyone a bit unprepared.
The Social Security Administration was able to provide a secure Benefits Estimator, but it lacked most of the essential vital information provided by the old paper statements (e.g., lifetime earnings history, estimates of disability and survivor benefits, etc.). The Benefits Estimator also only provided online access to workers who had earned at least the forty work credits necessary to receive a benefits payout.
In other words, for the past year, those with fewer than ten full years of work experience had no opportunity to access personalized Social Security information to plan their financial futures. Thankfully, this is no longer a problem.
YOUR FINANCIAL HISTORY AND FUTURE: ONLINE
Effective May 1, 2012, you can create your own Social Security online account (of which, more later) to obtain a wide variety of useful information about your earnings history and future benefits. The data available includes:
Your financial history:
- A chart of your lifetime earnings according to the Social Security Administration’s records
- A chart of estimated Social Security and Medicare taxes you’ve paid into the system
Estimated future financial benefits:
- Estimates of any retirement and/or disability benefits you may receive (based on current information in your account and current legislation)
- Estimates of benefits that may be due to your spouse, once you begin receiving Social Security benefits
- Estimates of survivor benefits that may be due to your family after you are deceased
Other important information:
- General information about Social Security for everyone
- Advice and information for workers aged 55+ who are contemplating retirement
- Information about qualifying and signing up for Medicare
Your online account also grants the opportunity to apply online for retirement and disability benefits and provides a printable version of your Social Security Statement.
CREATING YOUR ONLINE ACCOUNT
In order to access your records online (or help a less web-savvy older relative do so), it’s necessary to create a My Social Security account. The process isn’t difficult, but some of the steps can be a little persnickety.
1) Make sure you have the information you’ll need: your Social Security number, a valid email address, and a U.S. mailing address. (Note, you must be at least 18 years old to create your account.)
2) Go to https://www.socialsecurity.gov/mystatement/ and click on “Sign In or Create An Account.”
3) Read the essential information and agree to the Terms of Service.
4) Provide your name, Social Security number, date of birth, email and home address. You’ll also be asked to provide a phone number to verify your identity.
At this point, the system offers an extra security precaution by allowing you to opt in to receiving a text message any time your online account is accessed.
5) The Social Security system will also ask you a series of multiple-choice questions regarding your personal financial history, such as credit cards you own or loans you may have secured. If you’ve ever accessed your credit reports through AnnualCreditReport.com, these questions (for which “None of the above” seems to be the correct answer more often than not) will seem familiar. Sometimes, the questions can seem a little obscure.
6) You’ll be asked to create a user name and password, just as when you create any online account. However, most of us usually ignore the instructions and just jump in to create a password; sometimes, we’re alerted that oops, our passwords aren’t long enough or lack the right characters. This system is picky. Be sure that your password:
–Has at least 8 characters
–Includes letters AND numbers
–Includes at least one “special” character, like @, &, *, ^ or any of the other wacky ones that usually AREN’T allowed in passwords.
Of course, you also need to make sure you’re creating a password that is both memorable and yet not identifiable (or guess-able) by others.
You’ll also have to select three security questions and provide answers, which may later be used to help you verify your identity, should you forget your password or allow it to lapse. (Note: your account password expires after six months.)
LOGGING IN TO YOUR ACCOUNT
Upon signing in, you’ll see three tabs — My Home, Help Center and Security Settings.
My Home includes three useful pages:
1) Overview — includes important messages, a summary of estimated benefits as of your full retirement age and your last reported annual earnings. It takes the Social Security Administration some time to catch up with income tax return filings, so your 2011 earnings may not yet appear.
2) Estimated Benefits — includes both general information regarding issues like how you qualify for benefits and how benefits are estimated, as well as personalized, specific information regarding your actual benefits. This page lists your estimated retirement benefits if you retire at your full retirement age, as well as at 62 or 70. The system also provides an estimate of disability benefits, as well as any survivor benefits for which your family might be eligible.
The Estimated Benefits page also identifies whether you’ve earned enough quarterly work credits to qualify for Medicare at age 65.
3) Earnings History — lists your taxed Social Security and Medicare earnings for your entire work history, dating back to the first year in which you were employed and had Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld (or applied). This page includes yearly listings as well as a summary, for your earnings life thus far, for both Social Security and Medicare taxes paid into your account, both by you and by any employers you have had.
The Earnings History page also includes information regarding how to contact the Social Security Administration to correct errors in your record.
The Help Center includes a series of Frequently Asked Questions regarding Social Security cards, retirement, disability, Supplemental Security Income and Medicare.
The Security Settings page allows you to customize your settings, including your email address, password, and security question, and lets you revisit whether you’d like to receive text messages to alert you when your account has been accessed.
Oddly enough, although the Social Security Administration has managed to go high-tech, their online sample statement is still a PDF of an old printed statement.
ORGANIZING YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE
Each of the three My Home pages includes a “Print/Save Your Full Statement” link. When you click it, the system automatically downloads a PDF version of your current statement to your hard drive.
I encourage you to change the name of the PDF from “Your Social Security Statement” to something you can sort by year, and, if applicable, by name (in case you and your spouse share a computer). For example, I might name my current statement SocSecJulie2012.
The move to a digital format doesn’t make organizing and reviewing your financial information any less important. While access is made more convenient, you no longer have an automatic prompt in the mail each year. To give your financial planning the kick in the pants that we all need, take a moment right now to open your new My Social Security account.
Next, schedule a date on the calendar (perhaps the day before your birthday) to check and download your Social Security statement. If you liked the old paper system, print the PDF and keep it in your filing system. Otherwise, just maintain the PDF on your computer or in the cloud.
Consider this scheduled event an excellent opportunity to review your benefits estimates as well as your other retirement investment returns. This is also an ideal time to schedule appointments with your financial team (e.g., accountant, Certified Financial Planner, financial organizer, estate-planning attorney, etc.).
THE DIGITAL DEBATE
Complaints abound that going to a digital-only reporting system will cause confusion and inconvenience, particularly among older Americans. However, any worker over the age of 60 who has not yet applied for benefits will still receive a paper statement, and any seniors already receiving Social Security will still receive information regarding changes (increases in benefits, revised costs of Medicare, etc.) in the mail.
More importantly, the world is progressively moving online. Banks and vendors are increasingly charging to send paper statements or suspending their use altogether. The U.S. Postal Service is all but certainly going to eliminate a day of mail service. And the annual environmental and fiscal costs of printing and mailing statements to 160+ million Americans is simply untenable.
Just as it was once necessary to learn how to operate a telephone (and eventually, an ATM), one cannot live in the world without learning how to use a computer. “I hate computers” is simply not an acceptable excuse for someone born in the 1950s or later to not take responsibility for his or her financial future.
Setting up an account takes approximately eight minutes. Checking and printing one’s statement can be accomplished in under three. If one is unwilling to spend three minutes online each year to access vital information, the issue is not one of technophobia; it’s a matter of making excuses for fiscal irresponsibility. And no federal agency (or professional organizing blogger) can help with that.
So sign up, log in, and use the information to help you organize a great retirement.
NAPO Expo 2012 Recap (Part 5) — Mother Knows Best
As we finalize our look at the 2012 NAPO Expo, we’re just in time for Mother’s Day and some EXPO exhibitors who created organizing products especially for busy parents.
HatchedIt is a free (advertising-supported) online service. The founders call it a “mobile whiteboard for managing your personal life” and say:
The site is collaborative, so you can communicate important information to spouses, grandparents, nannies, babysitters and even the kids, themselves. Once logged in, the site greets you with a dashboard to give you an at-a-glance view of your life.
Calendar — Add events or tasks just as you might do in Google or Outlook — just select the event name, date, time, whether you want a reminder and any additional information. However, while events can be scheduled as repeating, tasks cannot, and scheduling is not particularly sophisticated. For example, you can’t schedule an event specifically for the second Tuesday of each month, and the system requires you to schedule an end date, even if your recurring event does not have one, which might cause hiccups unless you mark an end date in 2025.
Grant everyone in your immediate family (i.e., those you specify as members of “My Account”) access to view the family calendar. Each member has his or her own log-in and password. Then you can choose if you’d like to allow other, specific, members of HatchedIt to see select categories on your calendar. For example, you might give grandparents access to see all sporting events or school events, but not items related to your work schedule.
Contacts can be uploaded from Yahoo, Gmail, Mac iAddressBook or Outlook directly into the system or you can input individual names. Anyone to whom you grant any viewing access will be designated as part of your circle.
Groups are designed to work like real-life groups — members of your book club, other PTA parents, etc. HatchedIt envisions Groups as a way to have a private, central location for sharing information and discussion.
Curate It is a place to hold important photos, articles and information. Think of it as an in-HatchedIt Pinterest board, though curated pages need not be reciprocally or publicly shared. Tag items for easy categorization in five classifications: family, home, love, fashion or miscellaneous.
Blogs — HatchedIt has a built-in RSS reader to make it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and news sources. HatchedIt pre-loads some feeds and you can add any of your own favorites.
Default settings are always set to Private, and privacy is very granular, such that you could give access to only your Curate IT page and not your Calendar, or only specific calendar categories.
When you add family members to your account, you designate each member’s rights to view and/or edit parts of your family’s account (so your web-savvy six-year-old doesn’t cancel all piano lessons). You can always adjust these permissions later, but any HatchedIt member designated as a child will only be allowed to interact with members of the family account.
The ability to gather all of this information in one central location, with multiple adjustable privacy settings, should appeal to parents. However, I was concerned that the calendars cannot sync with other calendar systems. I must admit, as one who prefers slightly more sophisticated technological tools, it seems more like a training wheels system more ideal for someone who isn’t particularly comfortable with technology.
For my purposes, separate email accounts, private Facebook groups, RSS feeds and Pinterest boards (or a private board on a Pinterest alternative site) would be adequate, as I generally prefers separate tech solutions to modular solutions under one umbrella. However, as a non-parent, I don’t have the wide variety of interacting family contacts and activities to juggle. Plus, my NAPO colleagues voted HatchedIt as Organizers’ Choice for Best Tech Product at this year’s conference, so I encourage you to test it out.
AboutOne is like a digital filing cabinet for keeping track of all your important documents, information and memories. The system has an easy, fun set up where you merely click people-shaped icons and input the names of adults, kids and pets in your family.
Records — Visit the Organization Station, the central hub of AboutOne, to fill in fields, as appropriate, for each record you wish to add. (Later, you’ll click the Add button on the site’s dashboard.) Provide a title, location, date, time, description, and add attachments (like photos, videos or files). For any item, select up to four categories under which the entry can be concurrently filed:
Memories (Photos, Quotes, etc.)
Health Info
Possessions (Home, Car, Inventory, etc.)
Education or Training
Attach photos, videos or files, like scanned insurance policies, medical records or home inventories, and if there’s an associated web site, like a purchase page for your new car or the Facebook update for a big event, you can link the entry to that URL.
So, if Billy lost his first tooth on 5/8/12 at 4 p.m. at Friendly’s, you’d enter that information as a Memory, and then attach a photo of his toothy, toothless grin. Similarly, if you bought an iPad, you’d fill in the pertinent information and then scan, upload and attach the receipt and the AppleCare policy.
The screen also lets you pick family members or contacts related to the entry, and add a label, like a tag, to improve searchability. So, if you buy an auto insurance policy, you can link the contact information for your agent to the scanned-in policy.
To search records, just click on the categories (Memories, Health, Possessions or Education) in the dashboard’s left-side menu and select what you wish to view, either from a list or a card (like little square sticky notes lined up in a grid pattern). There’s also a menu item for Stream, to simply view everything, in case you can’t remember how you categorized or tagged an entry.
Contacts — Import from Gmail, Outlook and other contact systems, or directly input any individual’s essential information, like phone, email, physical addresses, and social media profiles (including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Skype). Add tags for categorizing contacts.
You can also create groups from your contacts, so you can easily access, for example, all of your physicians, your home improvement team (contractor, decorator, professional organizer) or your financial team (bookkeeper, accountant, insurance agent, attorney).
Shareables — Once you enter data, AboutOne can manipulate the information to provide a wide variety of lists, updates and reports. For example, once you enter birthdays and anniversaries, you can create a gift log for recording gift ideas, as well as gifts given and received, and be reminded of important dates.
There’s an online scrapbook to which you can add “multimedia memories and milestones” simply by emailing from your smart phone or scanning directly to your account. Each memory is automatically timestamped, so you don’t have to remember when something happened. Paper Doll particularly likes that you can easily pull from the Memories section to format a printable or email newsletter to keep people up-to-date on your family.
Other Shareables include babysitter instructions, health history reports, and caregiver reports. When kids are applying to college or for scholarships, the organized records can help them create education histories and volunteer summaries. You can create home maintenance summaries to share with prospective buyers, and the system can even calculate your capital gains at tax time.
AboutOne currently has no calendar, but a sync-able calendar system, with emailed reminders and historical records, is planned. Up to 2 GB of storage is free; premium paid plans will soon be available.
AboutOne’s system is relatively intuitive. However, at various points in the data entry process, users are offered social gaming-style points and badges, which I found distracting. Nonetheless, I can see how some users might find this motivating to help discourage procrastination.
Organizables is a remedy for morning chaos in households with kids. Every busy parent knows what it’s like to try to get children dressed and out the door each morning. Professional organizers often suggest easing morning tensions by helping kids select their next-day’s wardrobe the night before. In some homes, we even advice selecting a week of outfits and setting them in a drawer or hanging sweater organizer.
Of course, there are other times when planning can hit snags — when trying to pack outfits for sleepovers at Grandma’s, or when parents have shared custody, and even when kids need outfits packed up and ready to wear for recitals or other special events.
Organizables has created child-sized hanging garment bags for boys and girls. Each weekday set includes five Monday-Friday bags, each with pockets for socks, underwear and accessories. The clothes stay clean, dry and wrinkle-free, even on travel days, while parents and kids can enjoy the relative serenity of calm mornings, where every essential is ready and available in one tidy package. And there’s even a customizable daily checklist to make sure everything makes it into the hanging bag!
The weekend sets are designed for on-the-go kid activities — each set has a Saturday and Sunday hanging bag (for everyday activities and/or going to a house of worship or family event) and two zippered activities bags (like for ballet lessons, sports or sleepovers) also with bright graphics. Since the latter are more likely to be used outside the child’s main home, they can be customized with the child’s name, favorite saying or key word.
Organizables bags are printed on durable, lightweight, water-repellent material with zippered storage compartments, and boldly labeled with each of the days of the week. They’re made with durable, non-toxic materials and comes with a one-year warranty. Sets are available with or without the cute graphics, in case older kids prefer a little more subtlety.
On a related note, I fell in love with one item from NeatFreak!’s NeatKids line. The cabana-esque Whimsical Wardrobe, available in either Candy Taffy (shown below)
or Pop Rocks (a more neutral, boy-friendly) is a perfect stand-alone wardrobe for hanging clothes, folded dresser items and toy storage. It’s adjustable and customizable, and just so darned cute, that I have to admit that I’d like one of my own. (Paper Mommy, are you reading this?)
Happy Mother’s Day!
NAPO Expo 2012 Recap (Part 4) — New Twists On Old Favorites
This year, three products particularly caught my eye because they offered something comfortable (high quality, for example, or proven concepts), twinned with something novel (either visually or functionally). They’re things that make you say, “Oooooh!”
BOXES FOR THE HOME BANKER
As we’ve discussed previously, Bankers Boxes aren’t the stuffy file boxes they used to be. Fellowes has made some nifty strides in modernizing what used to be a product for simply boxing up documents. Nowadays, they’re a snap to assemble, have internal dividers to keep papers from getting squished or falling over, and can come complete with internal file rails to make use of hanging folders. Bankers Boxes even come in fashionable colors and are made from environmentally-friendly recycled materials.
So, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I came across the Bankers Box display at the 2012 NAPO Expo, but I have to say, I did a double-take.
Fellowes Representative Al Arends with a New Expo Star
I’m pleased to report on the new Bankers Box Home Organization Stackable Storage boxes. Most notably, as you can see in the photos above and below, the new boxes are PRETTY! A classy black and white brocade pattern makes them attractive enough that one needn’t feel the obligation to hide them in the basement, attic or the back of a closet. These boxes would not be amiss sitting on shelves in a home office, bedroom or craft room, and one wouldn’t want hide them away if unexpected company were to arrive.
Each lidded Bankers Box Home Organization Stackable Storage box has:
–A large vertical window to make it easy to identify the contents stored within
–Heavy-duty double-wall or triple-wall construction to make the boxes sturdy enough to stacking and long-term use
—Sturdy, reinforced plastic handles that snap into place, easing lifting and carrying, and maintaining the structural integrity of the box
–Patented FastFold design which allow for easy set-up without glue, tape or complicated instructions
In addition, all of the Bankers Box Home Organization Stackable boxes fold flat when not in use, helping you maximize storage space. Because of the heavy-duty construction, you can use, fold flat and reuse the boxes with minimal impact or wear. Fellowes designed the stackable boxes to fit standard-sized shelving:
- Small Stackable: 6″ high x 12″ wide x 15″ deep
- Medium Stackable: 10″ high x 12 wide x 15″ deep
- Large Stackable: 10″ high x 15″ wide x 24″ deep
The Stackables are suitable for storing memorabilia, non-archival photographs, school papers, craft projects, baby blankets, and so on — whether you’ve got paper, clothes, home dcor or whatever, you can bank on this solution. (C’mon, you’d have used that pun, too!) They’re sold four to a package.
There’s also a Small Underbed box, with the same features (though not designed for stacking) measuring 6 1/4″ high by 17 1/2″ wide by 27″ deep. The underbed boxes come two to a package.
Fellowes is also manufacturing a line of Holiday Stackable Storage boxes. The green-lidded, red-bodied boxes have many of the same features as above: a large, clear plastic window to view contents, easy FastFold set-up, heavy-duty construction and the ability to fold flat. However, instead of snap-in handles, the holiday versions have built-in plastic handles and a multi-level design with adjustable dividers for protecting delicate ornaments.
The Large Ornament Box measures 8″ high x 15 1/2″ wide by 23″ deep and is sold in packages of two.
Bankers Box Home Organization Stackable Storage boxes can be purchased at Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, Walmart and Sam’s. To see how the boxes come together and fit ideally into your home, take a peek at this video.
GET MAGNETICALLY ATTRACTED TO YOUR TASKS
Abundance Organizing, a company run by five professional organizers, had a nifty display of organizing products at the 2012 NAPO Expo, none more captivating to Paper Doll than the magnetic task organizers called Pile Tiles™. Each of the colorful, cloth-covered magnets is coded with a large letter standing for an associated task or category.
At first glance, Pile Tiles™ may merely seem adorable, but they serve an important organizational purpose. First, they can be used in a traditional manner to help sort papers and hold them down (to protect against a wafting breeze); instead of using sticky notes or index cards, these re-usable darlings are environmentally-friendly and charming to behold.
But not everyone has the space or the inclination to pile up or spread out papers to sort them. By making use of magnets (and a spare refrigerator, metal door or even hanging baking sheet), you can easily sort and hang papers vertically, without the need for paper-poking pushpins or a bulletin board.
In either respect, Pile Tiles™ are perfect for visual learners and they add a delightful decorative note, allowing you to feel good about leaving your papers out even when company arrives.
- The Starter Set categories are: Financial, Legal, Medical, Insurance, Home, Car, Keepsake and Action.
- The Action Set includes: Calendar, Call, Discuss, File, Pay, Pending, Research and Sort
The Starter Set of Pile Tiles™ is designed to help you initially sort your papers. Once your piles are organized, the Action Set is focused on helping you tackle individual tasks, like phone calls, scheduling, and paying bills. Each set sells for $39.
(Special thanks to organizational product maven Jeri Dansky, who made sure I hightailed it over to the Abundance Organizing booth to see the Pile Tiles™.)
BOXING UP THE PROJECTS
Certainly, between file folders and three-ring binders, paper peeps haven’t been at a loss for products to contain their papers. But Smead’s My Organizer (MO) System has three elements that replace the need for hanging folders and binders, while still promising to keep project paperwork collated, tidy and vertical, whether on your desktop, shelved, or tucked away in file drawers.
The MO Kit has three basic elements:
1) MO File Cases — Each file case is a sturdy snap-open, fold-into-place, flat-bottomed file box capable of holding up to 750 sheets of letter-sized paper. The File Case fits most standard file drawers, including those with hanging file rails already in place, or can be easily placed vertically (narrow edge outward) on bookshelves.
The file cases are envisioned for sub-dividing categories of documents or individual projects, but can also be used as small desk-top file boxes for action or quick-reference items. Die-cut handles make the open-top file cases easy to lift out of file drawers and transport to meetings or events.
The cases come in Navy and Black Circle designs (as shown above), as well as in Moss Circles, similar to the black pattern above, but in a creamy beige and moss green.
2) MO Kits — Each kit includes standard letter-size SuperTab file folders, pre-printed and blank labels, and an easy-to-follow instruction sheet with organizing tips for starting common projects, like taxes. Options include Medical, Financial, Project and Starter kits. Because the file folders are standard, they can be used within the MO File Case, or, as necessary, in standard hanging folders.
The MO Kit file folders come in three colors: Camel, Moss, and Light Blue, while the oversized, SuperTab-ready label templates are keyed to the individual kit types:
Projects — with label templates for budgets, contracts, expenses, invoices, etc.
Medical — with labels for medical history, dental procedures, insurance claims & EOBs, receipts and HSA records, etc.
Financial — with templates for bank statements, tax information, investment records, charitable contributions, etc.
3) MO Case Wraps — Available in Navy, Black Circles and Moss Circles to match the case files, the MO Case Wraps, as noted by Smead, “provide security and discretion for important files and hold documents securely for easy storage.”
Made from durable, professional-quality corrugated paper, the Case Wraps are designed to pack flat, “pop open” into shape and stand up to heavy usage. Top die-cut holes and side die-cut half-moons provide easy access for sheathing/unsheathing the cases without pinching or paper cuts.
The MO system offers a secure, attractive, streamlined alternative to hanging folders or binders. Use the kit folders to sort the essential documents of any project — tax records, trust documents, divorce paperwork, etc. Gather the kit folders in a File Case to keep vital papers together. Finally, for your 007 Super-Top-Secret documents, wrap it all in a Case Wrap for extra security, preventing files from falling out and non-essential documents from being mistakenly tossed in.
Next week, we’ll close up our tour of the 2012 NAPO Expo with some mom-themed organizing resources — just in time for Mother’s Day.
NAPO Expo 2012 Recap (Part 3) — Catch A Falling Star and Put It In Your Pocket
So far, we’ve talked about the NAPO 2012 Conference, itself, and have explored some dreamy paper products, as well as meat-and-potato organizing essentials. Today, we’ll be looking at more NAPO 2012 Expo innovations — so get ready to pocket some organizing solutions.
CAPTURE THE WRITING ON THE WALL
The prettiest paper-related booth at this year’s Expo had to be 3M’s Post-It extravaganza. Post-It has come a long way from basic blocks of yellow, as we discussed in the Paper Doll Winter 2012 Carnival. Indeed, there was so much to discover, we’ll have to have a “stick ’em up” day to cover all of 3M’s sticky innovations. But today, the topic is pockets. (Trying saying THAT aloud three times, quickly.)
The first time I heard about Post-it Wall Pockets, I was jealous, and not just because a colleague had received a sample and I hadn’t. It was such a simple but brilliant idea, I kicked myself for not having come up with it!
Now that I’ve finally seen the product up close, I have not been disappointed. All varieties come with 3M’s durable adhesive-backed strips, which hold securely but remove cleanly. My curiosity as to whether the Post-it pockets would have the stamina to support multiple pieces of paper has been satisfied, and I can envision the wide variety of applications, including:
- Inside kitchen cabinets for keeping emergency numbers, cooking/measurement equivalencies, important dates, etc.
- On the interior of school locker doors for holding permission slips, ID cards, notes, photos, etc.
- Behind the garage door for keeping recycling and trash pick-up schedules handy
The pockets are designed to stick anywhere other than on wallpaper or delicate surfaces, though I can’t imagine you’d want to apply adhesive pockets on Great-Grandma’s antiques in the first place.
Post-it Translucent Greek Key Pockets — Don’t know what a Greek Key is? Neither did Paper Doll, but Google made clear that the 3M folks were talking about the decorative pattern on the colorful pocket fronts.
Longtime readers know what a fan I am of pink, but I have to say that the mossy green isn’t to my tastes. Paper Doll is hopeful that 3M will expand the line, as they’ve done with so many of their compellingly sticky products, to include blues, reds and other “serious” colors that might make these incredibly useful pockets more appealing to tough guys and bank-serious office-supply shoppers.
These designer pockets come in three distinct layouts:
Vertically arrayed for bills (5 3/8″ wide x 7 7/8″ high) so you can keep pending invoices and bills to be paid in one tidy spot, perhaps on the side of your filing cabinet next to your home office bill-paying center or in the information hub of your kitchen.
Horizontally arrayed for letters (9″ high x 12″ wide) to handle all letter-size invoices, handouts, flyers, etc.
Horizontally arrayed for organizing receipts and coupons (4″ high by 9″ wide) with a shorter vertical profile to prevent items falling out of reach.
The Greek Key pockets come two-to-a-pack (of the same dimensions) or in multi-packs (with three different shapes/sizes).
Post-it also has clear pockets in the same dimensions, in single packages or multi-packs, in case you’d rather have your pockets blend in to your home or office surroundings. These clear pockets have a delicate (but translucent) dotted pattern, allowing you to still see which documents are contained.
HOLD ON TO YOUR DIGITAL DEVICES
As we saw last week, folders are great for corralling presentation papers as well as academic materials. When all of your information is paper-bound, you’re set. But what happens when you need someplace to put your flash drives? Sure, most have a little plastic hole in the casing to let you attach a cord, but flash drives as jewelry aren’t always optimal.
Carrying them around in backpacks, purses and attach cases keep them relatively safe, but flash drives are tiny, and if you’re carrying multiples, it’s easy for the cords to get tangled or the drives to get lost in the bottom of your pack. Of course, keeping your digital files in the cloud (via Dropbox or a similar service) can make it easy to access your files, but as many of us at the NAPO 2012 conference learned, free (and even paid) internet access is not always dependable. It’s best to have your digital files close at hand.
Smead’s Self-Adhesive Poly USB Flash Drive Pocket solves that problem.
At a slim 2″ wide by 3 9/16″ high, this clear, acid-free, PVC-free, polypropylene pocket has a white peel-away liner which reveals a permanent adhesive backing.
Having pockets for your USB flash drives offers an efficient way to safely store your digital files with the corresponding hard copies. The pockets are sized to fit most common USB sizes, and feature a reclosable flap for added security. The Self-Adhesive Poly USB Flash Drive Pockets come in packages of 6.
POCKET YOUR PAPERS ON THE GO
There are lots of other times you might want to have a pocket handy. For example, the Smead Self-Adhesive Poly Corner Pockets may look like the beginning of an origami lesson, but they pack a powerful organizational punch.
Arranged with two clear, PVC- and acid-free polypropylene right triangles to a white liner sheet, the adhesive-backed pockets fit practically anywhere you might need to store full-sized pages, index cards, spare note cards, cheat sheets, etc. If you’ve got a flat surface, whether vertical or horizontal, you’ve got a way to keep things copacetic.
The great thing about the poly pockets (not to be confused with Polly Pocket) is that they can be quickly and easily added anywhere — inside a daily planner, file folder, three-ring binder, or wherever — to provide a safe place to tuck items away.
Just peel, stick the (permanent, water-based acrylic adhesive) pocket, and tuck your items in. The Self-Adhesive Poly Corner Pockets come in two sizes, small (4″ x 4″) and large (6″ x 6″), but only in 100-to-a-box cartons.
Smead also manufacturers similar poly pockets for business cards (3″ wide x 4″ high), CDs/DVDs (5″ x 5″) and documents (9″ wide x 6″ high) such as for packing slips attached to the outside of containers, all in packages of 10.
For something with a larger pocket profile, 3M’s Post-It line has created some nifty Notebook Pockets, available in two sizes: Small (5.5″ x 5.3/4″) and Large (5″ x 8″), sold three pockets to a package.
These are ideal for students, busy volunteers or professionals, for holding note cards, coins and cash for the vending machine, receipts, coupons, or schedules. The durable, clean-removing adhesive strips allow you put them in daily planners, notebooks or binders quickly and easily.
A dotted pattern on the front of the pocket affords attractive light security, and there’s a re-writeable stripe for labeling the pocket. 3M’s Dual Lock flap closure protects papers from sliding out — and it’s surely a nicer solution than taping a zip-lock bag to the inside of a notebook.
FINDING THE (K)NACK(it)!
No recap of the NAPO Expo’s pocket organizing solutions would be complete without mentioning our friends from NACKit, whose products Paper Doll reviewed at length a few years ago.
As you organize — as you purge non-essentials, group similar items together and tidily contain them — the final key is knowing what’s living where. Labeling boxes is essential if you don’t want to lift, move and look through stacks of boxes to find what you want. But labels can be problematic — adhesive can dry up, ink exposed to the elements can fade, and people tend to just scribble new, sometimes indecipherable, labels on top of old ones.
NACKit! developed a refillable, re-usable labeling system based on a simple premise. Apply durable adhesive-backed pockets to any container and merely change out the NACKit! label card, as appropriate.
Each original NACKit! kit contains two dozen 4 3/4″ x 6″ self-adhesive vinyl pockets and 28 blank NACKit! cards with lined backs for listing contents. Mini kits contain three dozen 2 3/8″ x 3 3/4″ pockets and 40 blank cards. Original NACKit! kits are most suitable for packing boxes and storage tubs, while the Minis work best with smaller boxes, bins and totes.
Every Original kit includes 24 pre-printed label cards and four blank cards for customizing. Label any blank card by hand or use the NACKit! card template and Card Designer to create labels that fit your preferences and inimitable style.
Get the basic NACKit! for Everything (with all cards blank) or select a kit with pre-printed cards for popular categories.
- NACKit! for Home — with cards for Arts and Crafts Supplies, Baby Clothes, Books, Camping Supplies, Financial Papers, Holiday Decorations, Photographs, Shoes, Sports Stuff, Summer Clothes, Winter Clothes and Toys.
- NACKit! for Moving — with cards for Attic, Basement, Bathroom, Bedroom, Dining Room, Family Room, Garage, Kitchen, Laundry, Linens, Living Room and Master Bedroom.
- NACKit! for Office — with cards for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Banking Documents, Clients/Patients, Contacts, Office Supplies and Tax Documents.
The NACKit! for Christmas includes 16 self-adhesive pockets as well as 16 red and green cards for Indoor Lights, Outdoor Lights, Tree Ornaments, Wrapping Supplies, Greeting Cards, Wreaths/Garland, Decorations and Holiday Dishes, and four blank cards.
You can also buy the NACKit! Origimini, which includes a combination package of one dozen original-size self-adhesive pockets and 16 original cards, as well as one dozen mini pockets and 20 mini cards. And if you’re setting up a new home, NACKit even sells a huge combination Toolkit, which includes two Everything kits, two Mini kits, two Origimini kits and one pre-printed kit of your choice.
Happily, you don’t need deep pockets to make use of any of today’s pocket-based organizing solutions. But if you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket, be assured there are more nifty NAPO 2012 Expo product recaps to come.
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