Archive for ‘Office Supplies’ Category
This “Magic” Product Makes Shipping Packages as Easy as Wrapping Leftovers
Packing and shipping is not exactly rocket science. And yet Paper Doll hears a lot about shipping-avoidance and packing-box frustration. In a perfect world, whenever we wanted to ship something, we’d have the ideal sized box (so as not to waste space, and also not to have one of those almost-sealed, bulging boxes where the flaps quite don’t meet). We’d also have just the right amount of padding material to prevent jostling, and it would all be easily recyclable.
My clients tell me they procrastinate on returning purchases and shipping care packages, birthday gifts, and other things because – although they have lots of boxes and bubble mailers thanks to their online shopping habits – nothing is ever the right size. This isn’t just a frustration; it’s also a financial issue.
In 2015, the major players in the ground shipping world, like UPS and FedEx, stopped pricing solely by the pound. They realized that a lot of relatively light packages were being shipped, and that cost them money. So, they started using dimensional weight, which had already been the practice for air-shipped packages.
What is dimensional weight?
The shipper calculates the cubic size of a package by multiplying its length, width, and height. Once the dimensional weight is calculated, they compare it to the actual weight of the package and the larger of the two is used to determine the package’s actual “billable” weight.
Need some help with the math? Google dimensional weight shipping calculators, like this one from ShippingEasy.com.
What does this all mean for you? A small thing in a bigger box will cost you more than that same thing in a smaller box, which means you have to keep even more shipping supplies on hand to find the just-right solution, and that causes clutter.
If only someone had a better idea. Oh, wait. Someone did!
SCOTCH™ FLEX & SEAL SHIPPING ROLL
3M is a marvel of innovation. The same parent company that brought us Post-It® Notes and Command hooks has done it again. They’ve invented a shipping solution that requires keeping less packing material and fewer supplies, takes less time, and creates a smaller dimensional weight for the things you ship.
And, honestly, I’m not persuaded that it isn’t some kind of magic.
Scotch™ Flex & Seal Shipping Roll
First, let’s get an overview of the product, with some fun, bouncy music.
Cool, eh? So, let’s dig deeper. How does this product save space, time, and money?
Eliminate clutter
What do you keep on hand for shipping packages? Boxes, right? Probably lots and lots of Amazon (and other) boxes. Maybe USPS “priority” boxes (which always seem to be way too large or just a little too shallow)? A family member bought a gorgeous Kitchenaid stand mixer and had it shipped. It came in a glossy, specially-carved Kitchenaid box (with a photo of the mixer on the package) inside a matching, plain, cardboard Kitchenaid-branded box (each with specially-placed handles for ergonomic carriage) and the whole thing was inside a box that would have made a nice toddler playhouse.
I bet you don’t just hoard boxes. I bet you have bubble wrap. (And not nice rolls of bubble wrap, but pre-used bubble wrap that someone in your house has popped and flattened along the edges, right?) Or maybe you have styrofoam peanuts. Or those clear, little balloons that look like nothing so much as an inflated zip-lock sandwich bag without the zipper?
And where are you storing these cardboard boxes, bubble mailers, poly bags, bubble wrap, and package stuffing? Probably wherever you can find to put it, and likely not in a very sound system. (No, I’m not peeking in your windows while you’re sleeping. Promise!)
Because the Flex & Seal allows you to customize your package to fit precisely around the edges of your item, there’s no wasted space in the box and no unnecessary padding to keep on-hand. Scotch’s marketing claims to save up to 50% on supplies, time, and space vs. using boxes. I don’t know how they arrived at that statistic, but it does mean that you can take up less space, and the roll can be stored horizontally or vertically, like a rolled-up yoga mat.
Save time
My clients are invariably piling up to-be-shipped items on the dining room table or on kitchen counters because they anticipate (often correctly) that it will be time-consuming to find a suitably-sized box, pad and pack the item(s) safely, and seal everything confidently. Scotch™ Flex & Seal Shipping Roll promises make packing as simple as:
- Cut a piece of the roll long enough to sandwich the item you’re shipping.
- Fold the Flex & Seal over whatever you’re shipping.
- Press to seal it by continuing to press around the three (non-folded) edges. (Imagine you’re wrapping your Thanksgiving leftovers in aluminum foil before putting them in the freezer. Or, as the product’s web site says, “Make sure you’re pressing gray surface to gray surface. A helpful way to remember it: Do not wrap like a present, fold and press like a calzone!”)
That’s it. Print out your label and affix it to the package. Wheeeee!
Secure and immobilize your package.
Scotch™ Flex & Seal Shipping Roll may look like a prettier version of bubble wrap, but it harbors a secret superpower. Flex & Seal is constructed with three layers.
The blue outer layer is tough and durable, making the package water-resistant and tear-resistant. The clear middle layer is bubble wrap, but seems slightly less inflated (and is difficult to pop), creating firm cushioning for the package.
And the grey inner layer is MAGIC. (OK, I’m sure it’s science, but Paper Doll can’t figure out how it works!) This inner layer’s “adhesive technology” makes it stick securely to itself but not whatever you’re shipping!
Scotch™ Flex & Seal Shipping Roll sticks to itself and not to what you put inside! What kooky shipping witchcraft is this? Share on XOnce you fold the Flex & Seal over your item (sandwiching it), just press firmly for a guaranteed seal. Folded and smushed (for another scientific term), the Flex & Seal conforms to the shape of whatever you’re shipping, immobilizing it to protect against wiggling during shipping.
Save money.
The marketing for the Flex & Seal Shipping Roll notes that by eliminating extra packing and shipping supplies, and securely sealing around the shape of whatever you’re shipping, it can reduce the package’s dimensional weight, as we discussed above. That should reduce your costs. Yay!
WHO CAN USE THIS?
Anyone who can comfortably maneuver scissors should be able to use the Flex & Seal. (If you’re doing a LOT of packing, consider a paper cutter in lieu of scissors.) If you – like Paper Doll – sometimes have trouble wrapping presents and fear this might be too similar of an experience, fear not. I’ve been known to unroll too little or too much wrapping paper and then the paper crumples and creases as I try to get just the right amount. Flex & Seal is thicker and sturdier, so that’s not an issue. Also, unlike rolls of wrapping paper, Flex & Seal is only 15″ wide, only a few inches longer than a paper towel roll, so it’s not unwieldy.
So, who can use this?
- People who rarely need to send packages. If you never have boxes or bubble mailers on hand and put off shipping things because you lack room to store them, this makes things pretty easy.
- People who send packages all the time – Grandparents? Check. Crafters who share their creations for fun or profit? Check. Small business owners who ship small, fiddly things? Check. Authors who autograph and ship copies of their books? Check!
When shouldn’t you use Scotch™ Flex & Seal? If you’re shipping something delicate or fragile, stick to a traditional packaging set-up, like a cardboard box with firm but flexible padding and a tight seal. Also, because the inner grey layers must be matched up, it’s not suitable for large packages.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Flex & Seal is recyclable. Scotch™ advises just removing the label before dropping the packaging off at a plastic bag recycling location. While not all communities have plastic bag (or plastic film) recycling centers, you can enter your zip code into the search bar at PlasticFilmRecycling.org to find a center near you.
However, I am concerned that not all labels are so easy to peel off. My 10-foot roll of Flex & Seal came to me wrapped in actual Flex & Seal! (How’s that for good advertising? It was very meta.) But both the marketing label (promoting other 3M products) and the UPS label would not peel off cleanly, so I’m not sure if that renders the package un-recycle-able.
HOW TO OPEN FLEX & SEAL PACKAGING
I’ll admit, I was puzzled when my Flex & Seal Shipping Roll (again, wrapped in Flex & Seal) arrived. I saw that I could just cut it open with scissors, but I didn’t want to accidentally cut what was inside. But I also couldn’t just pull on opposite sides of the packaging as if I were opening a bag of potato chips.
In the end, I guessed (correctly), and carefully used the scissors on the corner of the packaging, but I’m betting I wasn’t the only uncertain person, as Scotch™ produced this video to set people straight about three different methods for opening Flex & Seal packaging!
VARIETIES OF FLEX & SEAL SHIPPING ROLL
Scotch™ Flex and Seal Shipping Roll comes in four sizes:
- 10′ long x 15″ wide
- 20′ long x 15″ wide
- 50′ long x 15″ wide
- 200′ long x 15″ wide (suitable for small business shippers or people with LOTS of grandchildren)
As for styling, well, there’s not a lot of variety. The standard is the blue exterior with the grey interior.
Looking for something a bit more festive for the holidays? That regular sky blue is cheery enough (and sorta suitable for Hanukkah) but if you’re looking for something a little more Christmassy, Scotch™ has created a Limited Edition Holiday Color (which you and I may recognize as “red”).
LOCATIONS AND PRICING
Scotch™ Flex & Seal Shipping Roll is available online at Amazon and Shoplet, and at Target, Walmart, Office Depot, and Staples. Prices range from about $8.50 for the 10′ roll to $99 for the 200′ roll.
Disclaimer: As part of a voluntary program, I help 3M evaluate some of their products. 3M sends me free samples and I analyze them, and give my honest opinion on their site. I had just received my 10′ roll when I saw that my colleague Seana Turner had included Flex & Seal in her post, Seana’s Top Gifts for 2019, which gave me the idea to write this post. Be assured that all opinions are my own. (Who else would claim them?)
Organizing the Shape of Notebooks to Come: Panobook, Triangle, and Sidekick
Notebooks. Bullet Journals. Diaries. Sketchbooks. Whatever you use, notebooks are essential to capturing words, feelings, designs, and brilliant ideas so they don’t fade away into oblivion.
We’ve talked a lot of notebooks here at Paper Doll HQ, everything from waterproof notebooks to notebooks for left-handers. We’ve discussed various types of hybrid paper/digital notebooks, like Ampad’s Shot Notes and Versa Crossover, TOPS’ Focus Notes, and Evernote’s Smart Notebook by Moleskine. We’ve dug into magnetic notebooks, dry-erase notebooks, and customizable notebooks.
The blog has also looked at the 5 Key Points for Organizing with Notebooks, and in Notions on Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks, we delved into all of the considerations to take into account when choosing a notebook solution, including: price, branding, portability, binding, paper quality, lines, and color.
We’ve even looked at the shape of notebooks before when we presented Paper Doll Surveys the (Paper) Landscape. Because, sometimes, you just want something a little different. Today, we’re going to embrace three very different notebook styles.
PANOBOOK
Most notebooks have a portrait orientation. It’s rare, other than with sketchbooks, to see a notebook with a landscape orientation. Panobook, however, takes landscape one step further and delivers a panoramic (landscape-orientation, but wider) notebook designed to sit on your desk (in that bit of space between your abdomen and your keyboard), and eventually, on your bookshelf.
Created by Texas-based Studio Neat, known for a variety of innovative products, from wooden charging docks to cocktail-making tools to video-related apps, Panobook began life as a Kickstarter and quickly gathered community support.
It’s easy to understand why. Depending on the width of your desk, you may or may not have space to the left or right of your body. But your monitor is generally straight in front of you, and so is your keyboard, so unless you have an L-shaped desk, the real estate in front of you is pretty tightly packed.
If you want to take notes, maybe you can scroll (I mean, slide) your body to the left or right, or you may have to swivel in your seat to use the left side of the desk (or the right side, if you’re left-handed) to take notes. Unless your arms are long (and your eyesight so pristine that your monitor is very far away), there’s just not that much writing space in front of you. (And I’m pretty sure you don’t want a notebook poking into your tummy.)
Panobook was created to solve this problem of limited space. The panoramic format, measuring 160 mm x 288 mm (6.53″ x 11.34″) is designed to sit squarely in front of, or if you prefer, behind, your keyboard. (Turned vertically, of course, it can sit to the left or right, if you have that much space. But then you’d probably be using a traditional notebook or legal pad, right?)
Panobook is made of high-quality (Finch Fine Soft White Ultra Smooth 70 lb text-quality) paper and designed to perform with a variety of writing instruments and inks without causing bleed-through or smudging. Both the front and back of Panobook are rigid, made of Neenah LaCrema 617 Charcoal-colored 50 pt black chipboard. It’s all bound with sturdy black Wire-O (12.7 mm (0.5″) diameter), so Panobook will sit flat when opened on your desk. (For some of us, this is a huge deal!)
Each notebook contains 50 sheets (100 pages). Instead of being lined or blank, Panobook has a subtle dot pattern with grid spacing at 5 mm (0.20″). And there’s a quirky little twist. There are guide markers on each page that make it easy to quickly draw three rectangles on the page, sized ideally for web designers doing smartphone user interface design or creative types for doing storyboarding. There are also edge guides to divide each page and provide cues for layout. They’re subtle, so if you don’t need them, you might not even notice them.
So what do you do when you finish the notebook? Panobook is designed to let you archive your creations and comes with a slip case in a French Paper Kraft-Tone Standard White 100 lb Cover (for people who know about such things). Write on the spines to catalog your notebooks and keep your collection together on a shelf.
See the Panobook in action:
You can buy Panobook directly from Studio Neat for $20/notebook for one or two; they’re discounted to $19/notebook when you purchase three or more.
TRIANGLE NOTEBOOK
When I first saw the Triangle Notebook last summer, it seemed vaguely familiar. Back in 2012, there were quite a few posts on the design blogs about this product and it was selling at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shop. However, by the time I planned to write about it, the Triangle Notebook had already sold out and been withdrawn from the marketplace. Now it’s back in an improved form.
The Triangle Notebooks (both the original and improved versions) were created by Tan Mavitan, a creator based in Istanbul, Turkey and best known for his sculptures. As you can imagine, artists need someplace to collect designs and thoughts, so who better to imagine innovatively designed notebooks?
The Triangle Notebook appears to be just that: When closed, it’s a triangle. Flipped open, the notebook is square. The hard front and back covers and spine are encased in fabric, and the 160 interior (90 gr acid-free paper) sheets are narrowly ruled.
The Triangle Notebook comes in 13 solid colors, including Black, (light) Blue, Dark Green, “Green” (which looks more like chartreuse), Navy Blue, Pink, Purple, Red, Yellow, Dark Amber, Ghost White, and Mustard. There are also three Special Edition Triangle Notebooks: Triangle Thoughts (white with black avante garde style, and Yachtsman Blue (pictured below) and Yachtsman Red. All notebooks are 21 cm x 21 cm (8.26″ x 8.26″).
Personally, I find $33 to be a steep price, even for an admittedly lovely hardcover notebook, but my larger concern is that the pages may not lay flat when the notebook is open. Of course, at about 8 1/4″ square, you could place a small book weight in the center without obscuring too much of your content.
All versions of the Triangle Notebook are available from Amazon or from the Tan Mavitan Studio shop. The price in both venues is $33. The Studio often has discount codes listed at the top of the page; as of this writing, WELCOME2019 yields a 20% discount. However, there’s no shipping rate information on the site, and the notebooks do qualify for Amazon Prime two-day shipping, so check both options to see what works best for you.
SIDEKICK NOTEBOOK
Remember what I was saying about real estate on your desk being at a premium? Panobook isn’t the only option for handling this problem creatively. The Sidekick Notebook appears to be a mostly normal (if narrow) portrait-oriented notebook with a bottom margin cut strangely on the diagonal.
When closed, the Sidekick Notebook measures 21.5 cm x 8.5 cm (8.46″ x 3.34″). But once it’s flipped open, the Sidekick is actually an L-shaped notebook designed to hug the corners of keyboards, iPads/tablets, mousepads, books, and other square-ish items.
Instead of a portrait or landscape orientation, the Sidekick delivers both options simultaneously
The Sidekick, which comes 160 sheets (of 90 gr acid-free paper) per notebook, has a hard fabric-encased cover and comes in four colors: Red, Black, Navy Blue, and Light Gray. The layout is dot- grid style.
I suspect that the Sidekick won’t serve well for sketching large designs, but with both landscape and portrait writing areas, it’s good for taking notes and creating fiddly, small-detail designs.
The Sidekick is available for $24 per notebook from Amazon and from the Tan Mavitan Studio store, with the same discount and shipping caveats as noted above for the Triangle Notebook.
As always, the content you create and capture in your notebook is more important than the size, shape, color, or design. Sometimes, if a notebook is too spiffy (or expensive), we are reluctant to put anything but our “best” notions in them, which may mean procrastinating on doing anything at all.
If a unique design inspires you, embrace an unusual landscape or angle. Just give yourself permission to create first, and judge your work later.
Is Your Junk Drawer a Drunk Drawer? 3 Steps to An Organized Junk Drawer
[This post originally appeared on January 8, 2019, and has been updated with additional material as of October 4, 2021.]
One of my clients refers to her kitchen junk drawer the “Drunk Drawer.”
I don’t drink, so I thought I was missing a pop culture reference. She said that now that we’ve been working together to help her get her life back in order after a few tumultuous years, most of her life is planned out to the nearest detail — organized, categorized, contained. But, on the rare occasion that someone puts a margarita in her hand, especially after a stressful time at work, and she has the opportunity to let her hair down, everything flows freely.
My client notes that with a margarita (or a few) in hand, she says what she wants, she dances to her own drummer, and she gives herself permission to accept that not everything makes sense. Similarly, my client sees that her junk drawer is the one area in her house where she lets the wackiness take over, categories intermingle, and nothing makes sense.
I was reminded of my client’s story when I was approached by Katina Hazimihalis of Dumpsters.com for the Start Fresh: Take the 30-day Decluttering Challenge. (Definitely check it out!) They asked for my advice for Day 7, earmarked as the day of their challenge to “Declutter the Kitchen Junk Drawer.”
Longtime readers of Paper Doll know that I can never give only a little bit of advice, so there’s a lot that didn’t make it into that post. So, now it’s all here for you!
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE JUNK DRAWER?
Most of the things in a junk drawer aren’t junk. They just tend to be far from their friends in similar categories — the loose change that never makes it to the wallet, the tools that haven’t found their way back to the toolbox, all those random things we want to keep, but we don’t want to take the time to think about where they belong.
Seth Godin says, “The junk drawer is the enemy of understanding.” I have to agree. If you can’t name it, you can’t fathom it.
With paper, “miscellaneous” is the enemy. Is it financial, legal, medical, household, or personal? Is it action paper or reference paper?
With clothing, it’s either underwear, outerwear, or what you wear! You can subdivide into shirts, pants, dresses, etc., and onward to sleeve length or color or season, but there’s still a basic way to start breaking things down.
Categorically, things need to belong somewhere — is it fish or fowl? Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Ginger or Mary Ann? If you can name it, you can put it into place.
Something has to belong somewhere — is it fish or fowl? Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Ginger or Mary Ann? If you can name it, you can put it into place. Share on XBut unlike paper or clothing, not everything has just one home. Some things have a main home and a vacation home — that’s the junk drawer. Yes, you should have a home first aid kit, but it’s helpful to keep a few Band-aids in the kitchen. Yes, most of your office supplies belong in your home office or at your desk, but sometimes you need to grab a highlighter to make sense of the recipe you’re making.
At its best, the household junk drawer can be a miniature subset of categories found around the house. At its worse, however, it’s drunk. It’s sloppy, it makes no sense, and it leads you down a path of regret. Let’s fix that!
WHAT’S THE FIRST STEP TO ORGANIZING A JUNK DRAWER?
Empty that junk drawer. Dump the whole thing out.
It’s rare to hear a professional organizer advise emptying everything out of any space. Usually, we focus on handling one shelf or one category at a time. That’s because the last thing you want to do is get ninety minutes into a closet overhaul and have to pick up your children from school, leaving you with an unusable bedroom and a huge headache.
However, there are two reasons why a complete dump-out makes sense with a drunk junk drawer. First, junk drawers are small. Other than a wallet, purse, or glove compartment, I’d be hard-pressed to find a smaller space that requires concerted attention.
Second, approaching a junk drawer too delicately usually means nothing ever gets completed. People pull out one item at a time and make a few decisions, put a few things back when they decide to keep them, and never quite get around to making decisions about everything. Instead, the best thing to do is to remove everything from the drawer.
Because most junk drawers are in kitchens, what often works is to put a large towel down on the countertop or kitchen table (to prevent scratches). Plop everything down together. Slowly move things to the outer edges of the towel, as if you were searching for a Canadian penny amid all the coins you’ve shaken out of your piggy bank.
Grab the low-hanging fruit first. Remove gum, candy, soy sauce or hot sauce packets, or really anything edible and move to a “snack” box or food storage container on one of the shelves of your kitchen or pantry. Keep sticky, melty, or bug-friendly edibles out of the junk drawer.
Select one item at a time and ask yourself a few questions:
- Is it broken, expired, dried out (like pens or old wipes), or icky? Toss it out!
- Do you ever really use it? If not, you might toss it or donate it.
- Do you find yourself using it often enough that it really needs to be in the kitchen (or whatever room you keep your junk drawer)? If not, move it to a part of the house where it better fits with a category of items already kept elsewhere, like tools or office supplies.
- Do you need this many of whatever it is? Keep your favorite, keep the best, keep the one you’d grab if you needed it. Set the excess free (from the drawer) and either donate or move to a more appropriate place in your home.
Remember, if you don’t use it often, don’t let it take up the valuable prime real estate in your drawer!
NEXT, MAKE SENSE OUT OF THE CATEGORIES
At first glance, it may seem like everything in the junk drawer belongs to the miscellaneous category, but with patience, you’ll start seeing patterns.
Categorize the items into little areas/zones on the counter or table so you get a sense of how many of each thing you have. If you have duplicates, triplicates, or more, you may want to keep one version handy in the drawer, but move the remainder elsewhere, in your own mini-mall of “when I need them” supplies.
Ask yourself, what does the item DO? What is it for? Some category examples:
Batteries — Keep a small supply of the most commonly (and urgently) needed (like AA and AAA). Move the rest, plus whatever other sizes (9 volt, C and D, and smaller batteries for hearing aids, watches, and medical devices) to one divided container (like a tackle box) elsewhere in the house, like in a cabinet or on a shelf in the laundry room, utility room, or basement.
Duplicate keys — Use key cap tags/covers or labels to identify what the keys fit and keep all keys in one container.
Eyeglass Supplies — like spare reading glasses, mini bottles of eyeglass cleaner, a microfiber cloth, tiny magnetic screwdrivers for repairing glasses
Electronics — like chargers, plugs, adapters, power banks, or any electrical doo-dads that you need to get your hands on regularly. If you’ve got a charger you only use with your old video camera, store it with the camera case, not taking up space in your new-to-sobriety junk drawer.
Loose change — Store your change in a small-to-medium-sized lidded jar, and whenever you come across any loose change in the house, drop it in. When it’s full, take to your bank or donate it to charity. Hate rolling your coins? Hand it off to a responsible ten-year-old, or consider Coinstar.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Many grocery stores and retail lobbies have Coinstar kiosks; you just dump your coins in, and (for a hefty 11.9% fee) the machine will count your money and give you four great alternatives. You can:
- Get back cash in the form of paper money.
- Add cash to your Amazon balance (and learn more about how it works on the Amazon side, if you’d like to shop without using a debit or credit card)
- Buy an eGift card (and bypass the coin-counting fee) — Current retail gift card options include Amazon, Apple, Cabela’s, GameStop, The Gap, Hotels.com, iHop, Krispy Kreme (whoohoo!), Outback, Sephora, Starbucks, and many other retail and dining locations.
- Donate to charity (including the American Red Cross, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, Feeding America, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Make-a-Wish, NAACP, the Humane Society, UNICEF, United Way, and the World Wildlife Federation. (See? By organizing, you can do well for yourself and do good for others!)
Apparently you can also purchase Bitcoin through Coinstar, but it’s Paper Doll‘s policy never to recommend options that I can’t explain.
Office supplies — Subdivide this larger category into smaller office supply categories by function:
- things that put stuff together (stapler, tape, binder clips)
- things that pull things apart (scissors, staple remover, X-Acto knife or box cutter), assuming the drawer is safe from the hands of curious little ones
- things with which to write (pens, pencils, highlighters)
- things on which to write (sticky note pads, notepads) — but, in general, try to keep documents and loose papers out of the junk drawer. If you’re keeping takeout menus, coupons, contact info, etc., in that general area, use a file riser and keep a few file folders for the purpose. Paper should live upright, not squished in a tiny drawer.
If you have a home office or homework zone elsewhere in the house, keep these supplies to a minimum in the junk drawer. If you have a kitchen desk (built-in or otherwise), move the office supplies to the desk drawer.
Move any papers out of the drawer and into a desktop file box or a few three-ring binders designated for take-out menus, house-of-worship or homeowner’s association directories, and school reference papers.
Things that burn or light — birthday candles, matches/lighters, flashlights (but, as with sharp doo-dads, do consider whether these need to be kept elsewhere if you have tiny humans in the house)
Tools — People have a habit of getting a tool out of the toolkit for a task and never putting that tool away, tossing it in the junk drawer instead. Homes are much more efficient if you maintain a real toolkit with everything you need to run your house smoothly. (If you have an actual house or do a lot of DIY, get one pre-made; most Grandpas would recommend something by Craftsman. Or assemble one that fits your needs from recommendations online, like this Pioneer Woman post on building a starter tool kit.)
Then, just keep a small section of your junk drawer for a multi-tool (like a Leatherman), a few short-handled Phillips-head and flat-head screwdrivers (and a Robertson* screwdriver, if you’re in Canada), measuring tape, and a small hammer. Because, come on, is your house SO big that walking to the toolkit is going to exhaust you?
Note: If you find yourself doing a lot of tiny repairs, keep all of your tools in your main toolkit, but get any inexpensive hammer with lots of tiny screwdrivers nesting inside.
NOW, CONTAIN YOUR CATEGORIES
Once you divide everything into sub (and sub-sub) categories as described above, you’ll have a sense of what you own, and how much of it you’ve been trying to keep. Now it’s time to get creative and figure out how you are going to make it all fit together.
Divide, contain, and conquer!
But before you start moving things into their new, more organized homes, wipe down the interior of your drawer with a damp cloth.
If more than about one-quarter of the drawer is filled with just one category, then it’s time to move that category out of the junk drawer. Find that category its own dedicated home, in a box or bin that contains all of that category, whether on a shelf in the pantry, laundry room, or wherever is closest to where you use it most often.
Next, use padded, non-slip counter or shelf liners with a bit of rubbery “grip” to cover the bottom of the drawer. This will keep items from sliding around when the drawer opens and closes, and also prevent squeaking.
Use drawer dividers and/or small containers to corral each individual category. There are a variety of options depending on how many items you have in each category, how large they are, and how large the interior of your drawer is (in terms of height and depth). Consider the following options:
Inexpensive, plastic, flat-bottom baskets in multiple lengths/widths. You can arrange them as if you were playing a game of Tetris! (You can use lidded containers, like snap-closed pencil cases designed for elementary school students, but just the tiny added labor of having to open and close lids to retrieve and later put things away might dissuade you from staying organized and lead you to leaving things out on the counter or just tossed in the drawer.)
For example, Mainstays’ line of plastic storage baskets can be found at Walmart, various dollar stores, and online. I particularly like the narrow ones for writing implements, screwdrivers, and scissors.
Wider rectangular Mainstay baskets are better for notepads, batteries, and anything where you’re keeping quite a few things grouped together.
There are similar options if you prefer brighter colored baskets, and local or teaching supply stores tend to have cheerier baskets.
Ice cube trays work well for corralling very small items; mini-muffin trays can be great for keeping magnets from getting loose.
Sectioned drawer dividers can be found in a variety of styles in home goods stores. For example:
KD Organizers Deep Drawer Organizing Trays
Container Store Linus 4-Section Drawer Organizer
Mesh desk drawer organizers from office supply stores are usually inexpensive, low-key attractive, and work well when you want to buy just one thing. This Rolodex Deep Desk Drawer Organizer is simple, but gets the job done.
Expandable cutlery drawer inserts are also good alternatives; you may already even have extras in the house. Just be sure to use the ones that with rectangular compartments, and not those that are shaped like spoons or forks. Otherwise, most things won’t fit properly.
THE FINAL WORD
An occasional margarita on the beach can be fun, but you wouldn’t want to replace your morning coffee with it. Similarly, you don’t want your junk drawer to get too wild. Make time periodically to maintain your more orderly junk drawer and keep it from becoming a drunk drawer.
*Thanks to my fabulous former professional organizing colleague, Jackie Hollywood Brown (blogger at Canadian Army Wife and virtual assistant extraordinaire at Productively Organized), for introducing me to the concept of those nifty, square Robertson screwdrivers. They rank with Tim Horton’s, poutine, and Kim’s Convenience as just a few of the fabulous things our neighbors to the north enjoy under the radar. Please note that Jackie, herself, serves clients in the U.S. as well, so if you’re in the market for a VA, she’s the bee’s knees!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?) For more information regarding how Best Results Organizing handles affiliate links, please see the affiliate section of the site’s Privacy Policy.
NAPO2018: Paper Doll Explores Meori & the Glorious Goodies Within
In the last few posts, I explained that this year’s NAPO2018 was billed as a retreat instead of a conference and expo, and without an expo, I feared that I’d have no bounty of new products to share with you. However, thanks to our sponsors, even without an expo, I still have some goodies to present.
MEORI
At our welcome event, all conference attendees received a Meori foldable box absolutely filled to the brim with goodies. Mine was this Lava-Black-with-White-Flowers version, but Meori (a product I’d planned to profile this spring anyway), comes in a variety of gorgeous patterns and colors. That said, I couldn’t convince any of my colleagues to trade me this one for a Paper Doll-themed Midnight Magenta Meori box.
The Meori foldable boxes are made from high-grade, tear-proof, dirt-resistant polyester that you can wipe clean with a damp sponge. Did you know that the German word for “dirt-resistant” is schmutzabweisend? Boy, Meori’s packaging is educational!
All varieties fold or unfold in three easy steps to become a completely stable (but decorative) storage box secured with a wide elastic band. With the exception of the Mini, all styles hold up to 65 pounds! (Paper Doll does not advise having so much stuff in your Meori box that it turns into clutter you must cart around, but it’s nice to know that Meori is sturdy!)
The Classic Meori comes in four sizes and all have elastic mesh interior pockets.
Mini – The mini measures 5″ L x 6 1/2″ W x 5″ D, and is perfect for organizing teeny things in a bathroom, dorm room, school locker or car. The Minis come in Hibiscus Red (pictured below), Azure Blue, Marine Blue, Pink Berry, and Spring Green. ($12.99)
You can also purchase a shiny silver-finish wall mount for the Mini ($5.99) to keep things accessible on the back of a door or on a wall near where you’re heading out of the house. There’s also a collapsible Meori Mini Hanger in Marine Blue that lets you store three Minis vertically, hung from a velcro loop on the bar of your closet.
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- Meori Mini Hanger
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- Meori Mini Hanger – collapsed
Small – I was a little shocked to learn that my own Meori (pictured up top) is considered the Classic Small, because it’s fairly mighty. It measures 12 3/5″ L by 10 5/6″ W by 10 3/7″ D, and holds 4 gallons of whatever stuff you throw into it. (If those measurements seem odd, recognize Meori, a Japanese-themed German company, like most of the world, uses the metric system, and 32 x 27.5 x 26.5 cm sounds a bit less unwieldy.) The Small comes in 31 different color/pattern combinations in solids, polka dots, and flowers. ($25)
Medium – The Meori Medium comes in ten color/pattern combinations, with solids or star patterns, and measures 12 3/5″ W x 10 5/6″ H x 14 4/7″ D (again, it makes more sense in the metric system). It’s perfect for carting groceries or other shopping items (up to 6.5 gallons of goods) from cart to car to house and back out again. ($30)
Large – The Classic Large should probably be called the Double-Duty. It comes in 34 different color/pattern combinations, measures 19 3/4″ L x 12 3/4″ W x 10 3/4″ D, and has two interior compartments. It will hold 8 gallons of whatever you’ve got! ($35)
All of the Meori foldable boxes collapse down to between one and two inches thick, making them easy to ship or store when not in use.
Other Meori foldable boxes include:
Office – Measuring 12″ W x 13″ H x 12″ D, suitable for standard letter-sized folders, and able to hold up to 65 pounds, the Office Meori has built-in plastic file rails and a rewritable label. It’s ideal for mobile offices and workers who shuttle between locations, and folds down to 1 1/9″ when not in use. (For European readers, there’s also an Office A4 style.) Unfortunately, it only comes in Lava Black or Solid Grey, which is a shame given the rest of Meori’s bold color palette. ($40)
Outdoor – This outdoorsy version of the Meori has the same measurements as the Classic Large, but is made of water-repellent rip-stop fabric. Suitable for camping, sailing, picnics, and other outdoor adventures, it includes snap buttons and 4 metal grommets so you can secure it to a truck bed or tie it up to a boat. The Outdoor can be adjusted to use as two small boxes or one large one. ($42)
Meori has developed a line of accessories, including a 26″ padded, nylon carrying handle with metal hooks for use with the Small, Medium, and Large Classic foldable boxes, and a 56″ adjustable, nylon shoulder strap for use with the Small, Medium and Large Classic foldable boxes as well as the Office and Outdoor boxes. There are also covers for the Classic and Outdoor versions to protect your contents from rain, sleet, snow, dust – and, if you live in the southeastern US as I do – pollen!
If you’re looking for something to keep up with your snacking habits, Meori has a foldable cooling bag with a zipper that will fit in the Classic Small, Medium, and Large versions, and a tailgate carrier set with the Classic Large and the cooler, combined. The Picnicker fits in the Classic Small, Medium, and Large, and will secure four sets of (nesting) plates, cutlery, drinkware, and a cutting board. If you plan on taking some beverages along, Meori has 9- and 16-compartment expandable, padded bottle inserts.
Intrigued? Check out Meori’s site to find other attractive, durable, collapsible/foldable options, including 2-, 6-, and 12-bottle wine totes/carriers, insulated lunchbox cooler, hobby box, and more.
THE OTHER GOODIES
Our sponsors didn’t leave those Meori boxes empty. Inside, we had a bounty of useful items including:
Last year, I wrote Paper Doll’s NAPO 2017 Recap: New Twists on Time Timer and I’ve repeatedly shared all the reasons to love all of the incarnations of Time Timer. My old (circa 2002) Time Timer has certainly been put through its paces over the years, so I’m excited to add this tiny 3-inch powerhouse to my procrastination-fighting arsenal.
Container Store Zippered Pouch
Our friends at Container Store gifted all NAPO2018 attendees a large, zippered pouch. Made of nylon mesh embedded in clear vinyl for reinforcement, it’s weather- and puncture-resistant, and perfect for keeping travel or other documents sorted, clean, and dry. The pretty aqua detailing and zipper add some panache, and I’ve just noticed that it all matches the Time Timer version I got! How very organized!
Others of our sponsors made sure we stayed hydrated and healthy. Brother quenched our thirsts by supplying these nifty water bottles we could hang from our pinkies while schlepping across the “campus” between sessions.
Meanwhile, RXBar, a company that makes “whole food protein bars” in 15 different flavors (using egg whites, dried fruits, nuts, and dates, and just one or two other natural ingredients, provided bars for munching. (I got Blueberry!) And our own Denslow Brown of the Coach Approach for Organizers made sure we had some Emergen-C, just to make sure we didn’t get run down!
BUT WAIT, NO PAPER ORGANIZING PRODUCTS?
Although we did not have an expo this year, our friends at Smead (one of our two major NAPO2018 conference sponsors, along with Brother) knew that I couldn’t survive a NAPO conference without getting to hold organizing supplies in my hand. So, with great foresight, Smead brought our favorite people and some (new) favorite products. Coming up soon, we’ll delve into the newest and niftiest of what Smead had to show us.
Sticky to the Extreme: Organizing Information in Extreme Situations with Post-it® Extreme Notes
Unless you’ve been acting out a real-life Rip Van Winkle scenario for the past four decades, you don’t need anyone to tell you what a Post-it® Note is. In fact, you’re probably already imagining the 3-inch squares with adhesive backing in the traditional bright yellow. Of course, these office supply staples come in gorgeous color varieties and themed color collections with exotic place names – my personal favorite is Marseille, though Bali and Helsinki are soothing, and Miami is so…but I digress.
You can find these original sticky note essentials in sizes ranging from teeny 1 7/8-inch squares to 18 inches by 12 inches (and even as full-sized easel pads), with standard paper or recycled, in regular blocks or tissue-style pop-ups, lined and unlined, square, rectangular, or amusingly shaped. Post-it® even shakes up the adhesive styles – you can get them with regular adhesive, Super-Sticky®, and Full-Stick notes with the whole reverse side able to attach wherever and to whatever.
But never one to rest on its laurels, parent company 3M has decided to take things to extremes.
Post-it® Extreme Notes
You’ve used your favorite stickies for everything from writing down phone numbers to writing To Do lists, from “labeling” paper piles and folders to mapping seating arrangements for weddings. The absolute basic Post-it® Note can handle almost everything you throw at it. But it’s that “almost” that Post-it® has taken as a challenge. I can almost hear the engineers and marketing guys in a room together to ponder what might be possible.
“What if we soaked them?”
[Maybe they should have studied Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks for research ideas?]
“What if we froze them?
“What if we tried to stick them to bumpy walls? Heck, what if we tried to stick them to brick?!”
I’m surprised nobody suggested deep-frying them!
Nonetheless, they’ve taken up the gauntlet and produced the sticky notes for the tough gal-and-guy crowd that lives to the extremes.
Post-it® Extreme Notes are made with ultra-strong Dura-Hold™ Paper and Adhesive, giving them some very interesting properties. They’re “writable,” in the company’s words, meaning the special paper doesn’t interfere with the basic purpose – communicating (to yourself or others) – while making what we sometimes consider a white collar product to be pickup-truck tough.
The Extreme Notes:
- Are durable
- Are water-resistant
- Stick to textured surfaces (like brick, rusty metal, uneven wood, construction materials, etc.)
- Stick in both hot and cold environments (meaning they stand up to steam and ice)
- Can be used both inside and outside (from restaurant freezers and steamy kitchens to cars and walls in windy, rainy, gloppy weather)
- Are designed for tough conditions
- Remove cleanly, leaving no residue – just like the traditional notes
See them in action:
The Post-it® Extreme Notes are (at least for now) available only in the traditional 3″ x 3″ size, 45 sheets per pad.
Although they’re made in four colors: orange, green, yellow, and mint, the 3-pad pack (about $5/pack) and 32-pad box varieties come only in the orange/green/yellow assortment or all-green or all-orange. You can also get 12-pad boxes in all-green or all-orange. If you want the mint, you’ll have to buy the Extreme Note 12-pack assortment ($20/pack), as the mint just isn’t available on its own. You can find them at Amazon, Office Depot, Staples, Walmart, Target, and online office supply stores.
What’s are the downsides to these tough guys? Nothing too terrible:
- They are not recommended for use on paper.
So, use all of your other pretty sticky notes for those jobs.
- You can’t stick them directly to wet surfaces.
So, if your neighbor’s windshield is covered in frost, don’t write a note complaining that he didn’t shovel the walk and stick it on his frozen, crystalized truck. Instead, apply them to dry surfaces and they’ll keep holding when it gets wet. (In a steamy area? Just wipe the area dry and then stick the note on; even if it’s humid, you’ll get it on there quickly enough.)
- The colors are…not pretty.
I’m sorry, but the orange and green, to my eyes, are downright ugly. The yellow is pretty standard, so there’s nothing to complain about there. The mint, their prettiest color, can only be purchased as one-quarter of a 12-pack assortment! It’s likely that 3M considers this a feature, not a bug – perhaps people in tough environments are conditioned to want to buy tough, un-pretty colors. But I’m betting that there are plenty of lumberjacks and electricians who’d be delighted (even if they wouldn’t use that phrasing) to have some brighter, more uplifting colors.
I have to admit, Paper Doll doesn’t do much in the extreme. No construction zones, no frozen tundra. But I did come up with an idea that might work for me. Sometimes, when I’m about to do a television appearance or speaking engagement, I’m having trouble remembering everything I want to say. But if I can write key phrases on Post-it® Extreme Notes and stick them on the far wall of my shower (completely opposite the showerhead), I can rehearse while I lather, rinse, and repeat.
How might you see yourself using these Post-it® Extreme Notes? Please share in the comments.
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