Me and My Post-it Notes

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I love office supplies. I get excited every summer when the school supplies come out. And besides gel pens, sticky notes are probably my favorite. I use Post-it notes for everything. I’m an 80s girl, and that’s when my addiction to these sticky notes started. I love the neon-colored ones. The ones with little sayings are fun, too.

The adhesive was invented by Spencer Silver in 1968 at 3M, and the actual notes were invented by Arthur Fry in 1974 because he needed bookmarks for his hymnal at choir practice. When he used scraps of paper, they would fall out of the book. He needed something to stick to the page, but not damage the paper. He knew of Silver’s invention and tried it on some of the scrap paper in the lab. (Legend has it that the original Post-its were yellow because that was the color of the lab’s scrap paper.)

Here are my favorite uses. What would you add to my list?

  • A handy bookmark

  • Sticky tabs for reports and documents that need review/signature

  • For plotting mysteries - You can move them around on a wall or white board

  • For jotting notes (duh!) - I have them stuck to my monitor, laptop, desk, and refrigerator - I even stick them to the dashboard of my car when I really need to remember something. (My purse is always full of balled up notes/lists.)

  • Keeping character traits organized when I’m writing

  • I like the Post-it flipcharts when I’m brainstorming or facilitating meetings

  • Lists (usually for shopping, but they could be honey-do lists)

  • I daisy chain them together when stuff is related and I need more space to write

  • Tally sheets to keep a running total of my WIP’s word count

  • I mark issues or plot holes in my writing with them. It reminds me to tie up loose ends.

  • Marking stopping points in editing/writing projects - It helps me pick up where I left off