Office supplies to unstink your kitchen.

If you like to use sponges in your regular cleaning activities, and I know a lot of people do that you know you are supposed to sanitize them regularly and get rid of them fairly often.  The biggest problem that everybody has with sponges is that they don't take long before they start to seriously stink.  Most of that stink comes from the fact that you lay your sponge down and the bottom never dries properly but instead starts to gather a wonderfully mildew and must smell.  One user on imgur found a novel way to solve the uneven drying problem by using a simple Binder Clip.

Simple Kitchen DIY

Whoever this person is they really have their stuff together.  You can tell by the bright orange color of the sponge that it is clearly an O-Cel-O Sponge by 3M.  They are known as some of the best anti-microbial, anti-bacterial sponges, but as much as you and I both trust all 3M products you'll still need to replace them just as regularly as any other sponge.

Look at that extremely fashionable binder clip.  You can't easily tell exactly what color the clip actually is because the clip it self is reflective and on a reflective sink with a radioactive orange sponge, but you can tell it is red.  Upon a closer inspection you can see that the clips have a rubberized coating on the steel wires so it was easy to track down a reasonable replica.

Rubber Coated Binder Clips

Comparing the red between the two clips looks like the match is pretty much spot on.  Of course, if this was my kitchen I wouldn't have gone for the red binder clip.  The metallic red binder clip, the toxic orange sponge, the granite counter top, the sea-foam green soap and the chrome sink are just too many colors at once for my puny brain to comprehend.  I probably would have just stuck with the green clip since it kind of matches the soap's green hue.  That's just me though.  I have been accused of being color blind on more than one occasion.

Obama's Binder Clip Causes Outrage

Apparently some people are really picky.  Obama came out with his American Jobs Act this week and there are lots of people weighing the pros and cons of his proposal.  There are also people who want to talk about his usage of office supplies.  The New York Post came out with an article titled O gives jobs ‘clip’ service calling it a "chintzy fastener" and an "enormous paper clip" in the headline and opening sentence, but the rest of the article actually talks about the jobs bill.  Why would they tease me with that great introduction and then launch into boring lectures about economic theory?  Yuck!  Talk about the binder clip people; that's the news!

Luckily, the Huffington Post was up to the challenge and ran an article about the article that should have been about a binder clip, and actually did a better job of binder clip reporting.  They link to a product page from Staples with the information that they are quite affordable.  The Huffington Post is not an office supplies blog so I can excuse their lack of knowledge on the subject but a 1" capacity binder isn't going to easily hold all 155 pages of the Jobs Act when printed on standard paper.  They also wouldn't realize that even the generic Staples brand binder clips are not the most affordable.

Universal Binder Clips are Cheaper than Staples

The people who rate binder clips live in a strange world of actual capacity vs ease of use.  Everybody who has spent some time in an office knows that different weights of different papers (see previous article about paper weights as it pertains to actual binders) so nobody wants to say a specific binder clip will hold an exact number of pages.  However, I do know that a large clip can physically hold the 155 pages of the Act.  The binder people would probably advise against it as the binder clips are being forced nearly to their breaking point at 200 pages.

Of course I didn't actually see Obama with the paperwork so I can't tell you if he was performing an act of treason against office supplies.  It's possible he printed the paper double sided and it would fit easily.  It's possible he printed on a lightweight paper that would fit easily.  It's equally possible that he only had 100 pages of the 155 page document actually in the clip at the time.  Like finding out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, we may never know.

It does go without saying that once you are binding more than a 100 pages with one clip you have to know the pressure on the inner most pages is greatly decreased and may not stay put as well as you would like.  Buyer Beware!

Office Supply Spaceships

Some people in some offices (not you or me), have a little bit to much free time, and a few too many office supplies.  So they go about building stuff.  We've covered the construction of guns previously, but here we are talking strictly decoration.  So without further ado, I present to you the Office Supply X-Wing.

Directions on Instructables

If you, like me, have spent some time with some supplies you know what most of those supplies are.  The only one that threw me for a loop was the purple rectangle behind the cockpit (it is a group of unused staples).  So if you want to build one of these for yourself I've collected your shopping list below.  I went for the absolute cheapest things available (though pricing may change) so it might not be the same color as shown above.

• Blue Chisel Tip Sharpie ($0.89)
• 2x Large Binder Clips ($2.02 for a box of a dozen)
• 2x Small Binder Clips ($0.32 for a box of a dozen)
• 4x Pen Caps ($1.49 for a box of a dozen pens)
• 4x Brass Fasteners ($4.93 for a box of 100)
• Plastic Pencil Sharpener ($0.50)
• Some Staples ($0.60 for a box)
• Flat Chunk of Plastic or Metal (check your trash or under the sink and you'll find something.)
• Glue (whatever you can find will work)

So for $10.75 you can build your self a funky little X-Wing model.  If you can convince your boss that you need these office supplies as part of a larger order of other things you can probably sneak it in for free.  Or for about $20 you can buy yourself a real officially licensed X-Wing model.  Of course you'd probably get fired if you were building that at work.

If you are more into Star Trek than Star Wars there are similar plans for building models of the Enterprise from Office Supplies.  One version that relies heavily on Paper Clips and another that relies on Binder Clips.  So decide if you prefer the Rebel Alliance or the Ferengi Alliance and get to building you office supply hoarders.

Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Notecards

Today Woot posted a notecard primer for those of you unfamiliar with notecards. Their guide, titled Sean University: Notecards, is intended for those of you headed off into the exciting world of Buisnessy Enterpriseness Buzzword Management. The same rules apply to those of you heading back to school wondering just what these notecard things are that your new teacher is requiring you to use. You should head to Woot and read the entire post, but just in case you are running low on time, here is the Reader's Digest version.

#1. You should only use 3x5 sized notecards. If what you need to convey doesn't fit on said notecard size and shape you need to rewrite it.

#2. If you were not sure what a notecard looks like, they included a diagram.

#3 When asked the serious question: "I’ve got to give a speech about notecards to executives of a notecard company. Can I write notes about notecards on notecards, or will that tear a hole in the very fabric of the very thing we know as reality????" they attempted to give a humorous answer. The correct answer the preceding question is "no."

Woot, however, neglected to answer the most important question: "Where can I buy notecards?" The correct answer is "everywhere." They sell notecards everywhere. I've seen them at Dollar Stores and at Grocery Stores. They sell them at Drug Stores, Convenience Shops, and Department Stores. Of course they also sell them at the Big Box Office Supply Retailers, but none of those places will give you the kind of variety you'll want if you are a notecard aficionado. After just a quick check I found 28 different kinds of 3x5 notecards available (commonly called index cards in the industry). There are cards that come with a color coded bar for organization, cards that come in neon colors if you want to blind your grandmother, and cards that come printer ready if you hate reading your handwriting. My favorite is the cards that come with a pen and specially modified binder clip.

Notecards with Binder Clip and Pen

Yes, you saw that right. Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is a pack of notecards with a specially manufactured binder clip that allows you to keep a pen attached to your notecards. Most people carry around a grip of notecards held together with a rubber band. They'll throw a pen in the rubber band to keep it from flying away, but you've got a pretty good chance that the whole thing will end up as a mess in the bottom of your bag. With Oxford's customized binder clip solution, you'll keep your notecards and your pen held together securely until you need them.

Of course, feel free to mod this setup with your favorite notecards and your favorite pen.

Build an Office Supply Gun

So I was checking around the usual blog and news postings for something informationally entertaining about Office Supplies. As usual, there are lots of snooze inducing press releases about Staples doing something boring, and Office Depot doing something even more boring. Just as my eye-lids were about to close, I saw a whip built out of duct tape and had to mop up that little bit of drool off my desk left over from the press releases. I am not an expert on all offices everywhere, but I wouldn't technically consider this an Office Supply. Yes you can technically buy duct tape at a nice discount from just about any Office Supply Retailer, but I prefer to buy that kind of stuff from a building that smells like tires.

OfficeGuns - For All Your Office Supply Gun Needs

Then I happened upon OfficeGuns.com. You'd probably want call me an Office Supply Poseur since it took me this long to finally stumple upon OfficeGuns, and you'd probably be right. While they do showcase a number of highly advanced guns you don't want to take anybody's eyes out, you just want to have some fun. So I suggest you stick to the Double Maul (named after the Mauly binder clips they like to use) for your inter-office warfare needs. Now unless you are friends with an international importer/exporter you won't have access to fancy German binder clips, but you can instead use normal binder clips.

3/4" Binder Clips are 19mm Binder Clips

The Mauly 19 and Mauly 32 are nothing more than standard binder clips that are 19mm and 32mm wide. An easy alternative for the Mauly 19 is the Universal 3/4" binder clips, and instead of the Mauly 32 you can grab some Universal 1-1/4" binder clips. With low prices like that on binder clips, why not pick up enough to keep all your enemies at bay. After you've successfully built a Double Maul and used it inflict pain on your least favorite Graphic Designer, why not try out more of the Guns at OfficeGuns.