It’s hard to believe it was only January that I reviewed the Arc Notebook from Staples initially and two things have happened that inspired me to follow-up on this – to share more about how it’s holding up with even more time and usage.
I continue to greatly appreciate this notebook – it really is my go-to place when I need to write things down. This includes my to-do list for the week (or occasionally, day), notes about any blog ideas, things that inspire me, and other things that it’s easier to hand-write (rather than using the iPad).
First, I need to share that there is something I forgot to talk about in my review – another positive aspect of this style notebook (both sizes) is that the rings allows for the notebook to be flipped over like a standard notebook. This means that if you have limited space for the notebook to be sitting out, you aren’t limited to it lying there closed until you need to use it. The poly style will lie flatter since the leather has some bulk and causes it to lie at a slight angle.
It’s been interesting though, the amount of paper that comfortable fit in the notebook seems so little. My perception (and some of the people I work with also) is first that it’s easy to put too much paper in – I think the rings are deceptive in that it seems like more paper would fit easily.
I’ve also become curious about if we’re simply more comfortable with having lots of pages available to us – so when we see how much we need to cut back on the pages, we feel ill at ease. I know I do – “uh-oh I only have 8 blank pages” – yet I have yet to use all those pages in a sitting. And there is still a bit of discomfort about how few blank pages there are – hence my curiosity about how we view the access to blank pages in our notebooks.
And it finally happened – there is a page that is coming loose and does not want to sit back around the rings. I shared in my initial post how it seems like the pages would not be easily moved around time after time – that there should be a limit before the punched paper will just stop working. Although I initially had some pages where the punched paper was certainly flexible from moving it around, it still connected solidly with the rings.
The only page that has caught my attention with this issue is the first page I left in the notebook – I left in the cover page – and the bottom punch doesn’t want to stay. Even though the cover page is beginning to not connect with the rings – it’s still only 1 of the punches. The page has 7 other punches helping to keep it attached – so even when the paper is getting tired, it happens slowly and there is support so that the page is still part of the notebook.
I’ve been appreciating the Arc Notebook so much that it took me a while to start using the similar notebook from Ampad (blog about that coming fairly soon!) and my intuition tells me that I will still prefer the Arc Notebook. As I see people making notes for themselves – either on random pieces of paper or just filling a spiral notebook with notes – I think about the Arc Notebook and how easy it is to keep like notes together – at least as long as you don’t fill a single page with notes that relate to different aspects of your life. It’s probably obvious that I consider this product a great option for a variety of needs that require our writing it down.
