Archive for ‘Office Supplies’ Category
5 Key Points for Organizing With Notebooks
A notebook is a notebook is a notebook. Or is it? The truth is, not all notebooks are created equally.
Notebooks seem like they should be pretty simple. At the heart, they are little books (or pads) of paper that allow us to take notes (or draw, or map). Of course, our notes may not be handwritten, so if our notes are digital, our notebooks must live in cyberspace, too. But there’s more to it than that.
Over the next few posts, we’re going to be looking at some new approaches to notebooks, making it a good time to review five noteworthy concepts related to organizing thoughts and information and making notetaking make sense. Bear in mind the following:
1) You can’t remember everything. The space in your brain is finite. It’s a common myth that most of us rarely use more than 10% of our brains. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I do know that our brains can’t maintain an unlimited amount of information and make it all equally accessible when and how we want it.
Simply put, you can’t think about things in-depth and with context if you’re constantly trying to remember to think of them.
Keeping a notebook doesn’t just enhance your memory; it sharpens your focus. When you merely listen to the world (whether the outside world or your own interior world), it’s easy to be passive. However, keeping notes turns listening into an active experience. The mere act of writing something forces you to put effort into comprehension.
Finally, once the general fact of something is written down (and temporarily stored), your brain can focus on analysis, processing and planning.
2) Loose notes don’t work. One of the ultimate, classic Paper Doll posts was Stay Far From Floozies: Avoiding the Loose Paper Trap. In organizing, we often talk about having a landing strip where we unload all the detritus of the day to ensure that phones get charged and keys remain accessible. (In the morning, the process is reversed and the landing strip becomes a launch pad, loaded with whatever essentials are needed to launch you out the door for a successful and organized day.)
If we skip the landing strip and just drop things wherever we let go of them, we’re dependent upon our eyes or memories for finding them again, slowing down the retrieval process. Having a notebook, one central location for incoming stimuli, is similarly a safer bet than letting notes “drop” on the backs of envelopes, the corners of napkins and the palm of your hand.
3) It’s not really about the notebook — it’s about you. As a professional organizer, I’ve found that the most significant reason a system works or does not, whether it’s for notetaking or calendaring or task management (or laundry or workflow or meal planning), has far less to do with the system used and far more to do with the user.
If an organizing system, or even the containers for your organizing system, do not fit your personal style, whether in terms of aesthetics, format or method of function, you’re going to find excuses to avoid using your system, and you’ll go back to whatever you used before, even if it failed you miserably.
(If going by gut instinct worked, we’d never seek outside help in the first place. Remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got!)
In Notions On Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks, we talked about how price and branding, binding, paper quality, lines, and color all determine whether a paper notebook format will be right for you. Reviewing that post will help you think about what notebook features will help you commit to a notetaking system.
4) The platform isn’t the same as the system. When we talk about notebooks, we tend to interchange the two, but they are very different. The platform is the physical (or digital) rendition of what tools we choose for organizing. At your house, you may store items in drawers, cabinets and lidded tubs, but that’s not an organizing system. Notebooks, like drawers, are containers. They serve a function for supporting an organizing system, but they are not the system, per se.
In the past, we’ve talked about a wide variety of notebook platforms, from environmentally-friendly notebooks (Green-Eyed But Not-So-Monstrous) to hybrid digital/paper notebooks (An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine, From Paper to the Cloud: Ampad Shot Note) to adjustable notebooks (Presto, Change-o! Shape-shifting Organizing Products #2), and even waterproof notebooks (Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks).
Whatever format or platform you use for a notebook, recognize that while the platform has to inspire your loyalty, it will only get you so far.
5) A notebook is only as good as the system you use for processing the information you put into it. Notebooks tend to exist for three disparate but sometimes interlocking purposes:
- Creating (journaling, sketching, designing) — What you put in these notebooks may not need to be tracked or managed. Just having a place to put your creations is often enough. However, if you are prolific, and retrieval of the product of your brilliance is an issue, you may want or need an indexing system for tracking what you’ve created.
This could be as simple as numbering your pages keeping a blank page at the front of your notebook for listing what you’ve designed or written. You might want to take a page (pardon the pun) out of philosopher John Locke’s approach to indexing commonplace books.
- Capturing (academic notes, business meeting notes, committee notes) — Once you capture essential information, you are generally asked to process it. The notes you take in your European history course may require you to capture fine detail regarding causes of wars or dates of battles so that you can memorize and regurgitate information. Conversely, notes captured in a client meeting might be the jumping off point for creating something new (an ad campaign, a solution to a problem, a product or service).
If you’re a student, to make sure you’ve got command of the subject, consider the Cornell Notetaking System (which is actually a system for learning and studying and not merely taking notes).
I was introduced to this process as a high schooler, long before I actually attended Cornell University, and it’s so useful, it’s really worthy of its own post. (Lifehacker has an excellent classic post on the Cornell system.)
For keeping up with business or other reading, you might prefer charting, outlining or mapping related concepts.
- Productivity (tasks) — If your notebook is designed to help you amass everything you need to do, rather than everything you need to know, you’ll need to find a workflow that makes sense for your life before you try to pick a snazzy notebook. A few systems that have enjoyed popularity in recent years include:
Bullet Journal — This method was covered in detail last year in Lifehacker’s The Bullet Journal Productivity Method Empowers Your Paper Notebook.
The AutoFocus System devised by time management expert Mark Forster. I’ve always thought my colleague Janine Adams, a Forster devotée, has done an excellent job explaining each iteration of the AutoFocus method. (The newest version of this system is called FinalVersion.)
So, I hope we’re clear that depending on memory or a series of fluttering scraps of paper is no way to master the information in your life. Notebooks can be excellent tools for organizing thoughts, but recognize that success depends on knowing yourself and your aesthetic deal-breakers, and employing information capturing and indexing systems that will keep you sticking to your system long into the future.
Paper Doll Post:
Pushing the Envelope: Small Solutions that Stick
Paper cuts. Buzzing mosquitos. Wallace Shawn. Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that are the most annoying. But as Nashville singer/musician (and pal) Andra Moran notes, it’s also the small things for which we can often be the most grateful.
If you’ve ever licked an envelope and then sounded like you just had root canal due to the blech-y taste in your mouth, then you know how important it is to have self-adhesive envelopes, one of the greatest envelope-related inventions of the last century. But y’know what? Sometimes even self-stick envelopes lack the sticktoitiveness (it’s a word! honest!) to get the job done and keep your mailings organized and safe.
Enter: Ampad DoubleSeal, bringing the belt-and-suspenders approach to packaging up your mail.
The DoubleSeal delivers exactly what it says. First, there’s a traditional gummed flap. Lick (or moisten with a sponge or wet napkin, as Paper Doll prefers), and then fold down the flap. Next, there’s a bit of adhesive tape built in to the rear of the envelope, below the flap. Peel the tape off and affix it over the seal of the flap as if it were one of those shiny Hallmark Gold Crown stickers you get when you buy a card. If my description wasn’t exciting enough for you, believe it or not, there’s a video:
There’s not much variety to add spice to your mailing life. The DoubleSeal comes only in one style: 24 lb. White “Wove” (but with a nice privacy design on the interior), 100 to a box. The envelopes are 4 1/8″ x 9 7/8″, making them the same height but a little wider than traditional #10 mailing envelopes. DoubleSeal is available from Staples.
The big question to Paper Doll‘s mind: why use a gummed flap at all? Why not just use an adhesive closure for the flap, just like with Ampad’s #10 peel & stick envelopes?
In addition to organizing the contents of your envelopes, sometimes it can be a relief to organize the envelopes themselves. It’s a petty annoyance, but have you ever noted that boxes of envelopes, particularly oft-used #10 envelopes, tend to topple over, inconveniently? And even if you keep the box on its side in the drawer, cheap envelope boxes tend to open, splaying envelopes across the inside of desk drawers. At a NAPO-Georgia meeting last year, one of our colleagues showcased an interesting little product that solves this problem.
Ascend Mailing Products, designed exclusively for Office Max, has created a book of envelopes!
Accordion-bound and perforated at the top of the flap, Ascend binds 36 “Peel-To-Seal” 24 lb. #10 security envelopes in one little book, keeping your envelopes tidy until you’re ready to use them. Is it the cure for the common cold? No, but it might stop some common cursing in offices where orderliness is preferred.
The book of envelopes doesn’t appear to be sold online at this time, but can still be found in some OfficeMax stores.
Paper Doll Post:
House of Doolittle: Doing Much for the Environment & Time Management (A Shoplet Review)
Periodically Paper Doll reviews new and established office supplies and accessories through the Shoplet Product Review Program. This week, we’ll be looking at two products from the House of Doolittle.
I must admit, although I’ve written about recycled products many times before, I was unfamiliar with House of Doolittle, a 95-year-old office supply company that makes 100% post-consumer paper products, including desk pads, appointment planners, wall calendars, laminated planners, non-dated planning supplies, and USA and international maps.
In 1988, House of Doolittle made the commitment to produce all of their products from recycled paper and materials, eventually converting to recycled cover materials and book wire, soy inks, and Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) and FSC-certified paper. All House of Doolittle products are manufactured in the United States.
The House of Doolittle Weekly Expense Log Business Planner harkens back to a pre-app era when most professionals kept track of time and tasks using paper planners. Paper Doll, with one foot in the paper realm and the other in cyberspace, still maintains a paper planner, and can see the appeal of having a small, tangible planner where one can quickly schedule appointments, check information and log expenses without need for Wi-Fi or charged batteries.
The Basics: This 7″ x 10″ wire-bound planner uses the two-page-per week style, with Monday through Thursday blocks on the left-side page with lines for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. standard workday appointments. The right-side page offers the same for Friday through Sunday, as well as a chart for keeping expense records for the week, with columns for Sunday through Saturday and rows for standard travel expenses (like meals, hotel, tips and parking) and typical weekly expenses (like postage, phone, entertainment, auto, gas and miscellaneous). The right-side page also has three small insets at the top, showing monthly calendars for the prior, current and next months.
The black leatherette cover is made of 50% recycled materials; the twin-loop wire binding is made from 90% recycled wire.
The Business Planner doesn’t skimp on extras. Trying hard not to be outdone by the whole of the internet, bonus pages include three-year holiday listings, area codes, time zones, toll-free numbers for airlines, car rental companies and hotels, air and driving mileage distances between major cities, weights and measures, metric conversions, recycling information, monthly birthstones/flowers and an annual anniversary gift list. (Whew!)
The Review: This type of planner is ideal for someone who needs to mark appointments and expenses but has relatively few notes to make regarding either. The space for each day is ample for charting the bare essentials (the who/where/why) of appointments, but with only two small rows for each hour, meeting notes are meant to be taken elsewhere.
Thus, it’s well-designed for what it’s meant to do, but professionals needing more robust planning pages would do well to upgrade from the weekly planner to a daily planner; those wanting House of Doolittle’s environmental commitment but seeking to schedule appointments more frequently than hourly might want to examine their Professional Hardcover Weekly Planner, with time frames on the quarter hour.
As a professional organizer, my biggest concern with the planner was the expense record section. Although the two-page spread for the calendar goes from Monday to Sunday, the expense section runs from Sunday to Saturday. Should the Sunday in the expense planner refer to the expenses from the prior page? Why don’t the days line up? It’s a small issue, and as long as the user sticks to the same recording method all the time, it’s not problematic, but it does seem confusing. Also, as with most paper expense planners, there’s only one slot per expense category per day, so you have to do your math first before recording anything, which may not be preferable.
The Business Planner runs about $17 at Shoplet for an individual planner, and is under $10 if you purchase in bulk.
The House of Doolittle 2014 Calendar is what Paper Doll used to call a desk blotter in ye olden days, and lets you view the whole month at one glance.
The Basics: The 18.5″ x 13″ January to December calendar, designed to be posted on a wall or used as a desk blotter, has a dark blue leatherette top-band and bottom corners to hold the pages in place. Each perforated page identifies the month, has squares for each weekday (Sunday through Saturday) with count-up/count down numbers (so you know you’ve got only 337 more days until 2015!) and twelve tiny monthly calendars at the bottom. There’s a wide section at the far right for jotting down notes, phone numbers and other incidentals.
The 2014 Calendar is made from 100% post-consumer paper and soy inks, and is made entirely in the USA.
The Review: When Paper Doll worked in television programming, having a desk pad calendar was indispensable for viewing the month at one shot and noting important events without having to look up from the desk. I’d forgotten how useful that was until I examined the House of Doolittle 2014 Calendar.
I think this calendar, which is smaller than the typical desk blotter by a handful of inches, would be perfect for kitchen desks, which tend to be cramped, and for students/bedroom desks, to maintain an eagle-eye view of when assignments and tests are scheduled. The only flaw I note is that the smaller pad size means that the squares for each day are reduced, and perhaps a bit cramped for those of us with sprawling handwriting. Nonetheless, it’s a spiffy little calendar for under $9 (under $6 if you buy in bulk).
Both the House of Doolittle Business Planner and 2014 Calendar, and many others HoD products, are available directly from Shoplet, which also maintains a colorful and often goofy blog about office supplies. Shoplet is also an excellent 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 planner and calendar will be donated to a Chattanooga-area non-profit.
Paper Doll Post:
An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – “Two great tastes that taste great together.”
Toyota Prius – combines an internal combustion engine with an electric motor
Zedonk – a cross between a zebra and any other equine
A hybrid takes two things that exist perfectly well independently and combines them to make something altogether more fabulous. Today, we’ll look at how two great product brands have united to create something fascinating: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine.
THE CLASSIC
It was the original little black book, made of moleskin (a thick, cotton fabric with a shaved pile surface). In the 19th and 20th centuries, artists like Matisse, van Gogh and Picasso sketched and painted in them, and authors who couldn’t have been more disparate in writing style or personality, from Oscar Wilde to Ernest Hemingway, scribbled their stories in them. Back then, the notebooks were black, handmade by French bookbinders, and, while utilitarian, represented a kind of artistic chic. The notebooks were for creative geniuses on-the-go.
In the 1980s, it was reported that, “Le vrai Moleskine n’est plus” (“The real Moleskine is no more”) and bookbinders had ceased fashioning them, but in 1997 the product was reborn via a Milanese parent company under the Moleskine brand. A strong marketing campaign and a passion for the ever-expanding line of notebooks made, and makes, Moleskine cool for hipsters and soccer moms, alike.
The features are basic, but beloved: luxurious covers, high-quality acid-free paper, narrow grosgrain ribbon bookmarks and color-matching elastics to keep everything together. Moleskine has followers every bit as passionate and devoted as Apple’s fanboys (and fangirls). Bloggers show off their notebooks and creative doodlings, as at SkineArt, and share their secrets, such as Freelance Switch’s noted The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks and Hacks post.
The collections include the original notebooks — ruled and unruled, with interior pockets and without, with squared or rounded edges — diary-like journals, tabbed “Passion” journals (to log one’s favorite books, films, restaurants, recipes, wines, travel locales, etc.), memo books and address books.
For creative types whose muses delight with other than words, there are sketchbooks, watercolor notebooks, music notebooks, and storyboard books.
There are even limited-edition collections, with design themes including Peanuts, The Little Prince, LEGO and Star Wars.
Moleskine feeds the addiction for a sensory experience only paper can provide.
THE MODERNIST
Evernote: It’s a service. It’s an app. (It’s two mints in one!) It’s almost an independent nation of global citizens, given that it has ambassadors (including friend of Paper Doll, Brandie Kajino). You probably either use it, or you wonder, “What’s the big deal?”
For the uninitiated, at its most basic, Evernote allows you to take digital things, collect them, and organize them. Anything you save, like a Paper Doll blog post, can be a note. Notes combine into notebooks (like how you have Excel worksheets within workbooks), and all are kept safely within your account, synced across all of your computers and digital devices.
You may wonder why you need Evernote — can’t you just use a bookmark in your browser? Ah, but have you ever clicked on an old bookmark or favorite to find the link you’d preserved yields a disappointing 404 Error message, meaning the page you wanted no longer exists? Evernote doesn’t just preserve the link — it preserves the entire page or document, along with comments, tags and anything else you wish to keep.
The Basics
Install Evernote, create your account and put a little “clipper” in your browser bar — it works much like Pinterest’s “Pin” bookmarklet to speedily grab what you want and tuck it away. Any time you want to save something digital, you can just click on the clipper bookmarklet and up pops a window to walk you through your options.
For example, at some point in the not-too-distant past, I went to Evernote’s page for getting started, and clicked on the clipper, bringing up a little window, as you see below.
Evernote selects a default title for your note; adjust it as you see fit. Add your tags, select in which notebook (for any of your various themes or projects) you wish the note saved, and add comments or stray thoughts. You can save an entire page, or highlight just one section for faster and more accurate “clipping” of web material (to skip ads and extraneous text or photos). And, of course, you can opt to save the original URL.
Beyond Baby Steps
Evernote saves much more than web sites and text. Instead of using your clipper, log in to your Evernote account and click “New Note” from the main page or within any of your already-created notebooks.
Above, the left column represents my various notebooks and tags; the center column shows previews of various clippings (i.e., notes) and the right column provides a place to create a more complex note, with formatting. Let’s say you have a brilliant idea for a blog post, or a wedding toast, or your packing list for an upcoming trip. Instead of scribbling it down on a random floozy, lock it up on Evernote.
Once in your account, you can drag-and-drop images from your desktop, files, and web pages. For convenience, you can also drag images directly onto any specific notebook (without having created a detailed note) or, for Mac users, directly onto the Evernote icon in your Dock. And it’s not just text and pictures. Record audio and move the .MP3 file to a notebook. Save videos, too. And tweets! Then combine them all in the way that works best for you.
Bing, bang, boom. Your “stuff” is saved to the cloud and synced across all of your devices. Better yet, it’s searchable, so between the native text of what you’ve saved and the keywords you create, you have your own private search engine to find what you want, when you want it, no matter how long ago you clipped or created it, accessible from anywhere in the world.
Now What?
Evernote has myriad uses. I save product reviews, news stories and articles that may be useful for Paper Doll posts and my Best Results for Busy People newsletter, as well as for current and future articles and books I’m writing. A recent discussion on the NAPO email chat found that my colleagues are using Evernote for various professional and personal solutions, including:
- Notes, statistics and ideas for presentations and workshops
- Titles of books, movies and other entertainment to check out later
- Household data, like battery sizes, light bulb wattages and air filter dimensions
- Organizing solutions for particular clients or situations
- Grocery lists (shared across devices with family members who can access them while shopping)
- Collated travel information and directions to use while on vacation or attending conferences
- Party planning and menu ideas, including recipes, organized by meal or ethnicity of cuisine
This is just a smattering of options — Evernote has a video library of tutorials and suggestions for ways to maximize its use. Evernote continues to expand its interactivity with other apps. Draw or hand-write with a stylus on your iPad or tablet in Skitch and Evernote saves it (and even translates handwriting to text). Save news and articles to read later via Pocket (formerly Read It Later) or InstaPaper. Study for exams (or your Jeopardy audition) by creating study notebooks with Peek, and record (with permission) phone calls with CallTrunk.
Evernote is free at the basic level. For $5/month or $45/year, the Premium level grants the ability to upload up to 1 GB each month (handy for photos and lots of files) and have individual files of up to 50 MB. You can also view historical versions of files, take notebooks offline for when you lack web access, collaborate across accounts, hide promotional language, and more.
THE HYBRID: PAPER + DIGITAL = EVERNOTE SMART NOTEBOOK BY MOLESKINE
The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine combines the advanced technology of Evernote with the sensory delight of a Moleskine notebook.
Paper notebooks are tangible and concrete. Digitizing provides accessibility, navigation, searchability and a different kind of permanence. What if you could combine the two? What if you could scribble down your thoughts on paper in your own quirky handwriting, then record, modify, and preserve them forever? Now, you can.
The Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine lets you create naturally, then use Evernote’s handwriting recognition and search capability to turn your scribbles and scratches into symbols of your brilliance. (Haven’t you always wanted a way to digitally search through piles of handwritten notes to find the paragraph or phrase you needed?)
Affix Smart Stickers to automatically add digital tags to your notes — kind of like built-in QR codes, to take information from paper to the cloud.
Just write in your notebook, and when you’re done, the Page Camera feature inside Evernote on iOS (on your iPhone or iPad — Android access is still-to-come) recognizes the tiny, square stickers, adds tags to the digital note, optimizes it and files it into a selected folder in your Evernote Digital memory.
Getting Started
Pick one of two sizes: the 240-page Large (5″ x 8 1/4″) notebook for $24.95 or the 195-page Pocket (3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″) notebook for $29.95. Both come with black hardcovers, green elastic bands and four sheets of Smart Stickers (tucked in the back pocket).
Then select your paper preference: a gridded pattern (like graph paper) or (dotted) ruled paper. You can use pencil or pen, though dark pens will yield the clearest digital results.
Each Evernote Smart Notebook purchase includes a complimentary subscription to Evernote Premium for three months, so your next step is to sign up for your Premium Digital account…and start creating.
This isn’t the first nifty blending of paper and technology. There’s the LiveScribe Echo and Pulse smart pens, which digitally record text written on special notepads and contemporaneous audio. But the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine combines two products you either already use (or would enjoy using) in a stylish, magical and far more affordable manner. It’s prettier than a Zedonk and less expensive than a Prius.
Of course, it’s no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup…but then, what is?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks
Paper Doll knows you’re keeping track of a lot of information. Chances are good that you use a digital device for jotting down notes on the run. Digital is dandy…except in a downpour. If it’s raining or snowing, a non-digital alternative is often preferable.
That said, paper isn’t always the best way to deal with the problem, either. Rain. Fog. Snow. Humidity. All of these make it pretty difficult to organize your thoughts without ink bleeding through a mess of soggy papers. And if you’re the sort to send an assignment notebook through the washing machine, or have ever found yourself with a squishy pile of drenched notes after righting an overturned kayak, you know that water and paper are not the best of buddies.
Happily, there’s a nifty third option — one that avoids shorted out digital devices as well as soggy papers. Waterproof notebooks!
WATERPROOF SOLUTIONS FOR WATERLOGGED WRITERS
Do you scoff? Do you wonder who really needs such a thing? Waterproof notebooks are stellar options for:
- Private detectives — especially of the film noir variety, as it’s always drizzling in those stakeout scenes
- Military personnel, police officers, and firefighters
- Poolside novelists — when you get the burst of inspiration in the middle of doing the butterfly, can you really wait until you’ve completely dried off?
- Sailors, boaters, fishermen, and lobstermen (and women, of course) — because you really don’t want to risk someone yelling, “iPad overboard!”
- Shower sages — so you don’t forget those notions that come to you mid-shampoo
- Coaches, scorekeepers, golfers and other athletes — because keeping track of stats during outdoor sporting events often means keeping dry notes, even if you can’t keep a dry eye when your team is losing
- Outdoorsy adventurers, campers, and divers — in other words, people who are the exact opposite of Paper Doll, Paper Mommy and our ilk
- Bird-watchers — who don’t seem so bothered by morning mists or summer showers, but whose disposition sours at the thought of losing data on a Wilson’s Warbler
- Agricultural workers
- Geological surveyors
- Veterinarians and vet students specializing in farm, zoo and other large animals
- Engineers and contractors working on outdoor projects
- Seattle residents and the cast and crew of Portlandia
- All the rest of us who might need to keep track of survival information during hurricanes, floods, and other inclement weather
Luckily, there’s no dearth of alternatives in the waterproof notebook market.
THE OPTIONS
Rite in the Rain makes a big splash as a major player in the field of waterproof writing. The All-Weather Notebooks evoke the sense of a bright yellow rain slicker and puddle-jumping boots.
The pages are particularly heavy-duty, tear-resistant and durable — a little humidity, coffee or sleet won’t do them in. They come in two styles: weatherproof and truly waterproof, and it is advised to use waterproof pens with Rite in the Rain notebooks.
Rite in the Rain weatherproof notebooks all include durable polyethylene covers and come in a wide array of styles, including:
Shirt Pocket Notepad — 3″ x 5″, 50 sheets, top-spiral, with a 1/4″ grid pattern. Also available with a buff or green cover — but isn’t the yellow spiffier?
Hip Pocket Notepad — 4″ x 6″, 50 pages, top spiral, with a 1/4″ grid, and also available with the buff or green covers
Reporter’s Notebook — 4″ x 8″, 50 sheets, 1/4″ ruled
Mini Side Spiral Notebook — 3 1/4″ x 5″, 50 sheets, 1/4″ ruled
Small Side Spiral Notebook — 4 5/8″ x 4″, 32 sheets, ruled or grid pattern
Large Side Spiral Notebook — 8 /12″ x 11″, 42 sheets, ruled or grid pattern, rigid back cover for support
All-Weather Sketch Book — 8 /12″ x 11″, 42 sheets, blank, with a top spiral
Other intriguing specialty notebooks include a Beef Calving Record Book, a Fire Investigation Field Book and a Job Hazard Analysis notebook.
Rite in the Rain Field Books have weatherproof paper and a “fabrikoid” hardbound cover. Each 80 sheet notebook is 7 1/2″ x 4 5/8″ and comes in a wide variety of styles, including universal, field and birder journals, as well as environmental and geology field books, each with its own unique style of ruled lines and grids.
For those who are in over the heads — literally — Rite in the Rain makes DuraRite notebooks for use in extreme weather conditions and even under water. They aren’t as fashion-forward as their bright yellow cohorts, but the DuraRite Shirt Pocket, Hip Pocket and Side Spiral notebooks use an entirely waterproof synthetic paper to ensure the safety of creative and scientific endeavors.
Rite in the Rain’s products retail for $4 to $20. For slightly more, customized versions are available — just choose your page patterns and preferred colors for covers, cover inks, paper and interior text.
Of course, Paper Doll would be a wet blanket if she didn’t provide a few spiffy wet-weather alternatives.
Emergency Zone, whose focus is survival and emergency kits and tools, has an All Weather Memo Pad that comes in a flashy red top-spiral assignment notebook.
Unlike the Rite in the Rain products, for which weatherproof/waterproof pens are suggested, pencils also work fine with the Emergency Zone All-Weather Memo Pad. Retailing from $3 to $7, it is waterproof and suitable for putting in a Grab & Go bag. No information regarding the number of pages or dimensions was available from the company.
Ritchie Navigation’s Wet Notes are completely waterproof 4 1/2″ by 7 1/4″ pocket notebooks with hard yellow plastic covers over the wide white interior side-spiral binding.
The 45-page notebook lies flat when open and comes with a soft lead pencil. The compass company’s products can be found at marine retailers nationwide. Ritchie also makes a 40-page 3″ x 5″ Wet Notes top-spiral notebook with a similar yellow plastic cover.
The Nalgene Waterproof PolyPaper Notebook is a bit of a conundrum. Scientists likely appreciate Nalgene’s 100-sheet Polyolefin waterproof notebooks for their exceptional durability, water- and chemical-resistance and smudge-proof performance under harsh field conditions.
The 4 x 4 gridded paper cannot be used with pencils, but accepts a wide variety of inks, including gels, technical markers and ballpoints. Pages are numbered 1-96, with title and Table of Contents pages at the front. The paper can actually be washed and dried flat, like favorite sweaters!
However, the mystifyingly high price tag of $70.80 per notebook makes one wonder if one has swallowed too much swamp water. Certain that Lab Safety Supply had made a typo, I checked Forestry Suppliers, Inc., only to find their prices merely $2 lower, and Ben Meadow’s forestry suppliers had the same pricing as Lab Safety. Casebound hard-cover Nalgene PolyPaper notebooks are similarly priced at Amazon.
Either I’m missing something vital, or the accounting departments of various university labs are going to erect a monument to Paper Doll once this post goes viral. (Readers, you do intend to make this post go viral, don’t you?)
Wiley’s Waterproof Notebook will do the job, but the water-themed bubbly blue cover may be a little too cute and on-the-nose for some (like our Sam Spade wannabes). It retails for about $7.95 for 64 spiral-bound pages, and a pencil, rather than a waterproof pen, is recommended.
Unfortunately, the exact measurements were not available from the company or their retail outlets. However, if you teach sailing, camping, outdoor biology labs, or other classes where adverse weather is an issue, you can request an evaluation copy to see if it would be suitable for your students’ needs.
INTERNATIONAL WATERS
International readers, you haven’t been forgotten.
The indelicately-named Suck UK is both a product design company and purveyor of odd but enchanting gifts and accessories for the home. I’m particularly a fan of their organizer-friendly products like Peel & Stick postcards and magnetic tea towels.
Suck UK’s Waterproof Notebook has a simple black cover, standard book binding, 100% waterproof paper and is designed to be used with the enclosed graphite pencil.
This notebook goes for 8.95 through the UK site, but Suck UK’s delightful products can also be purchased stateside at various sites, including Kris & Company and Ritz Sisters.
Australian readers can pick up Markrite All-Weather hard-cover 80-sheet notebooks, which are sewn with “rot-proof” thread and bound in durable casemade (i.e., turned edge) PVC covers. The soft-cover books are spiral-bound at the top or side, with polypropylene covers and 50 sheets of waterproof, tear-resistant, high rag content paper.
In addition to standard waterproof notebooks, Markrite also makes diving log books, bird-watching books (printed with detailed precision for tracking observation method, strata, and macro and micro habitat detail) and pocket-sized books.
Stationer and printer Flavell Creative Images of Scotland not only purveys Waterproof Tough Notes in multiple sizes (including A4, A5, and A6), but can also print whatever your business, club, group or family needs for any of a ridiculously extensive set of A-Z damp-or-drowning writing purposes.
With all of these options, here’s hoping your attempts to keep your wet-weather documentation organized will meet with smooth sailing.
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