I am ridiculous about notebooks. You’d be hard pressed to catch me without one, and inside each one you will find an assortment of to-do lists, grocery lists, random thoughts, doodles, sticky notes, and pieces of paper haphazardly living inside. That’s exactly how I like them: a record of daily life in all its hurried frenzy.
When I say I’ve always loved paper and these types of things, I really mean it…
as in, for my 7 year old birthday, I asked for a Daytimer, got it (along with a Barbie), and was 100% over the moon.
So I guess you could say I’ve put a lot of time into thinking about makes a good notebook. Here’s my criteria, but I would love to hear yours, and/or whether you threw out your notebooks in favor of a smartphone…
- Spiral Binding. Don’t get me wrong, I love notebooks with beautiful hand stitched spines that crack when you open them, but for practical purposes, the spiral binding is absolutely the winner. Why, you ask? Two reasons: you don’t have to hold it down while you right which means it’s easy to write on the back of pages, and you can fold it over completely. Simple as that.
- Hard cover. Nothing bugs me more than when the cover of one of my notebooks gets bent up, which happens a lot as my purse is a pretty rough environment. A hardcover will protect the precious pages inside.
- Pocket. Remember when Five Star notebooks were the ones to have and they had the pockets on the inside? A notebook with a pocket is the best. Gives you a place for all those little paper scraps you collect every day.
- Paper. I am weirdly less picky about paper in a notebook because, again, if it’s too nice I’ll never want to write in it for fear what I write isn’t good enough. Strange, I know. But it needs to be nice paper on which I can write on both sides.
- Style. While not a necessity, a notebook with a little personality + flair is always a plus.
So here are a few cute ones I found while browsing the interweb…
thunderpeep | nightowlpapergoods | cutiepiecompany
So, are you a notebook lover?
