Add Red and Pink to Your Supply Collection on Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today’s a day for love and romance, and if you’re feeling extra festive you may want to keep the spirit alive by adding a touch of romantic color to your office supplies. More reds and pinks can add a splash of warmth to your stock. For today only, our Valentine’s Day flash sale shows some love to a number of themed items!

Smead Pink Colored File Folders

Why settle for all of your file folders being the same manila color? Expand the palette a little with Smead’s colored file folders. Make a statement with a drawer of pink folders, or get multiple colors to add an extra level of organization. You can also get Post-It Notes or a box of highlighters all in pink as well. To get some red on your desk, try the Black n’ Red hardcover notebook. These are designed for takings notes in the office and the sharp color will stand out.

Moon Products Wood Pencils

To get straight to the point and express your love for Valentine’s Day, these pencils have a special Valentine’s theme and make a great gift. They can also be incorporated into holiday projects or notes for a special someone (perhaps on pink paper).

For some holiday treats, we also have a special on Swedish Fish and a giant tub of Red Vines. You can find all our sale items here for the rest of the day!

Sales and Coupons to Help You Get Organized

Everybody can stand to be more organized. Knowing where things are and where things go is an easy way to be more productive and maintain a less cluttered work space. Without a comfortable system, you can end up wasting time looking for things, missing important memos and deadlines, and feeling trapped by all the paperwork. This month we have several sales, coupons and rebates on products designed to help you sort everything out.

Post-It Flags

Let’s start with loose papers. If there are random sheets of paper around the desk, you can’t tell at first glance whether they require action or provide information or can be archived or tossed. Post-It flags are an easy way to at least spell that out. With a color-coded system, all you need to do is stick the right color flag on each paper as you see it and you’ll at least have a sense of what everything is, even if you aren’t able to get to it right away.

Smead Expanding File Box

The ultimate objective, of course, is to clear your desk of papers. Once the work is done and papers are no longer needed, it’s easy enough to stash them in a file cabinet or toss them completely. When paperwork still needs to be done or may need to be recalled quickly, to the point where you’re tempted to keep them on the desk, try a file box. Similar to an expanding file, file boxes have plenty of compartments for organizing and archiving papers. These, however, have an overhead flap and sit upright, so you can keep it on your desk and open it easily for quick retrieval of any files you may need. You can put all your to-do work in the front pocket and it’ll be just as accessible as anything on your desk. It’s even portable for working on the go.

Check out our page to see all of our organization deals. Right now, find a coupon for a free Stow Away Crate with an order of $150!

Adult Coloring Office Supplies

For the last year or so, we've seen a huge rise in the popularity of coloring. What was long considered a children's activity has proven to be quite therapeutic for adults. It makes sense when you think about it. In a fast-paced world filled with technology, it lets us slow down and get off the phones for a few minutes. Coloring is hands on, requires some degree of focus but no real stress, and the end result is a pretty picture filled with your input. Sales of coloring books has seen a marked increase over the last year, and should see another spike during the holidays.

Smead SuperTab Coloring Folders

But why stop at books? There are now all sorts of office supplies available with coloring patterns. These capably fulfill their office duties while also allowing you to indulge in coloring. After all, in the middle of a busy work day in front of a computer, there may be no better respite than taking some time off for a coloring break. Smead has several designs of folders, At-A-Glance, House of Doolittle and Blueline have calendar desk pads, and there is a nice assortment of notebooks and binders as well.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens

You'll also want comfortable coloring instruments. Colored pencils tend to be the favorite, and there are plenty of options from classic Crayola to finer Prismacolor pencils. Tombow Dual Brush Pens are comfortable to use with a pleasing stroke and have quickly become a favorite. Crayons, of course, are still an option, and now they're retractable with Mr. Sketch Twistable Gel Crayons. Yes, they're still scented and yes, it's okay to smell them. Everybody else does.

We've got a nice page with all of our Adult Coloring products and supplies here, along with a place to sign up to download several coloring sheets for free!

Simplifying Filing

The hardest part in having a proper, functioning filing system is developing the groundwork. It's easy enough to conceive a system, but unless it is ideal for your office and without the right supplies and storage options, it won't work. A good system not only gets the job done, it is simple, logical and effortless enough that you'll stick with it. The first step is making sure the right folders are in the right place every time.

The first thing to determine is how often files need to be retrieved. This can help determine whether an end tab or top tab system is right for you. Either way, this guide can help you find the folders you need. End tab filing systems stack on a shelf along the wall, making both the folders and their labels readily visible for everybody to access. These are perfect for reception areas, particularly at clinics or offices where all employees need to pull client files quickly.

Files that aren't recalled as often should go into hanging file systems. These are top tab folders that hang on rails built into most cabinets and pedestal files. Files meant for one employee or a household should go into a pedestal file that fits under the desk (frames are available for drawers without rails). General company files that everybody may need access to or that accumulate over time should go into a central filing cabinet.

 

Lateral Filing Cabinet

Vertical filing cabinets take up less space but are harder to retrieve files- use these for archives that won't need to be recalled often. Since lateral files keep all files closer to the floor and are filed from side to side, they are easier to retrieve and should be used with items that are more likely to be needed again. While large stacks in a single folder may defeat the purpose of organizing papers, use box bottom folders when it's necessary. Box Bottom folders are reinforced at the bottom and will support more weight.

Files that a single user will refer to frequently shouldn't be stuffed into a cabinet at all, but that doesn't mean they can't be organized. Desktop file sorters or frames keep top-tab folders straight on the desk. Using hanging files here will make it even easier if these folders will eventually find their way into a cabinet.

Rolodex Mesh File

With any of these options, labels are vital. Find hanging file folders that include tabs and inserts to keep them properly identified, while both top-tab and end-tab systems can benefit from color coded labels that make the right type of file easy to spot.

Purple Hanging Folders

With Smead's purple hanging folders you can come one step closer to treating your files like the royalty they are. Even though purple dye or purple ink is no longer limited to the richest of the rich, you can still pretend that normal purple dye used on these hanging folders is Tyrian purple and your files won't know the difference (they are just papers after all). The people at Smead want you to think that these colored folders are just to help you organize your files so you can easily find what you are looking for, but sometimes your files need to be pampered.

Smead Purple Hanging Folders

So, because everybody already knows that purple is the obvious choice for royalty, shouldn't we question why royal blue got to have royal in the name, while nobody ever says "royal purple" to describe a color? What evil cabal of designers is running this color naming scheme? Check google images for the Queen of England (you can't get any more royal than she is) and I couldn't find a picture of her in blue or purple, mostly white or pink and one picture in a lime green something or other. Hey evil cabal, how's royal lime green sound? Judging by those photos, and the lack of availability of pure white hanging file folders she'd be most happy with the multi-color pack of hanging file folders.

King Kong Doesn't Wear Purple or Blue

And what about everybody's favorite King? He doesn't wear purple or blue anything. Depending on if the King Kong you are watching was filmed in black and white or color he was either brown or gray, neither of which are very exciting colors. But let's just assume for one minute that King Kong had some files he needed a hanging file folder for, what would he pick? Of course he'd pick the Safco 14" x 18" Hanging File Folders. They are the only folders big enough for a giant gorilla. So next time you are shopping for file folders ask yourself WWKKD (What Would King Kong Do) and have a laugh at yourself for being clever and remind yourself you don't need anything that big and get some reasonable purple hanging file folders instead.

DIY Getting Things Done Tickler Files

If you are like me, and I can't assume that you are, then you have heard things about this Getting Things Done method (commonly known as GTD). As Wikipedia says (at the time of writing), it is an "..organizational method created by David Allen..." and it has given Mr. Allen a fair amount of praise and a fair amount of money. Of course there are people who will talk about how great he is and there are people who will talk about how he got it all wrong, but I don't fall into either of those categories because I've never read his book. One specific item in his book that was brought to my attention is the Tickler File system. It consists of 1 folder for every month and 1 folder for every possible day in a month, so 12 folders for 12 months and 31 folders for 31 possible days means you have 43 folders. This tends to simplify things for you by only allowing you to file stuff for some day this month, or another month.  The hardest part of this filing system is getting yourself into the habit of using the files regularly, they are easy to build yourself.

Start With Inexpensive File Folders

43 folders aren't very much when you are visiting the wonderful world of Office Supplies.  You can purchase a box of 100 file folders for cheap and you are almost done with your Tickler File.  The official GTD guideline for a the file says you should have your tabs lined up according the month and date.  That means your monthly folders might have the far right tab while your daily folders could then have the far left tab.  The Universal file folders (here is the link again) come in a box of 100 with tabs on the right, center and left.  That means you'll have 33 right, 33 center, 33 left and 1 extra.  That is enough to create two different Tickler Files and still have a few left over.

A Good Labeler is Nice

If you have good handwriting you don't need to worry about how you are going to label your files, but if you listen to anybody who has had to read my handwriting it is occasionally a necessity.  They are pretty simple.  You type in a word or a number, and it prints out a sticker that you put on your folder and you call it good enough.  Obviously you'll find all kinds of uses for your labeler around the office and around the house so it won't be a single use tool.  If you get a cheap labeler it won't have the same features as an expensive labeler so take a look at a selection of different label makers.

You can go online and look at pricing on David Allen's official GTD Tickler folders, but I'll leave that up to you and Google.  At the end of the day, for the price of one official filing system you can build yourself two filing systems and have a labeler left over to take home and start labeling members of the family.  I have a feeling your kids might mind more than your dog.