I have saved almost all the pocket size notebooks I’ve used in my life, except for the very earliest ones. I was drawn to small diaries and notebooks before I could even write, and the very first ones I remember using were Hallmark promotional diaries given away at the local drugstore– but I don’t have … Continue reading Hallmark Diaries from the 1970s
These Harvard Coop diaries mark the beginnings of my serious obsession with little black notebooks. I started using them at around the age of 9. Before that, I’d had some 3 x 5″ spiral notebooks, and I liked to get the little Hallmark month-to-a-page planners that drugstores would give out for free, but I barely … Continue reading Harvard Coop Diaries
What if someone found your secret notebooks from childhood, almost 40 years after you’d last written in them? It could happen: a 9 year old girl hid these notebooks in a crawl space in her home in 1983. They were forgotten and her family moved away. Decades later, contractors working on the home gave them … Continue reading Secret Notebooks from 1983
Some of my earliest notebook obsessions were spiral and wire-o binding notebooks. Back when I was a kid, other kinds of notebook were not as easy to find, or were prohibitively expensive for a kid to buy with her allowance. Nowadays, I rarely find myself using a wire bound notebook, but I thought I’d take … Continue reading Spiral and Wire-O Notebooks from My Collection, Part 1
Here’s another shoebox full of notebooks from my collection. This one has most of my Filofaxes and other refillable looseleaf notebooks. First, here’s the Filofaxes. I used 4 of these on a regular basis during the mid to late 1990s. (See Pocket Filofax, Early 1990s for details on the burgundy one.) These older ones all … Continue reading Shoebox Tour: Filofax and Other Looseleaf Notebooks
When I was a kid, I once made a notebook covered in denim, and I was fond of it for a while. Of course I still have it: The paper inside was from the letter-size pads my dad always used, brought home from where he worked as an engineer. I stapled together two signatures, and … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: Denim Collection (vs. My Handmade!)
Here’s an oldie but goodie, which is one of the earliest notebooks I ever used. I wrote the addresses of my friends and family on some pages, but also just used it for notes and doodles, and as a repository for some awesome Star Wars stickers! Many of my notebooks from this time show an … Continue reading Small Address Book, mid-1970s
Here’s a few oldies-but-goodies from my collection, three Roaring Spring spiral notebooks that I bought in 1980 and used between then and 1982. I love the colors– the outside covers are slightly faded and scuffed compared to the inside front covers. The back covers are just plain cardboard. You can see below that I stapled … Continue reading Roaring Spring Spiral Notebooks, Early 1980s
I found this batch of notebooks when I was home for Christmas– I guess I’d missed them on all previous sweeps of my parents’ house. It’s an odd assortment, from when I was in junior high school through my first post-college years when I was living at home again for a little while. Most of … Continue reading A Batch of Childhood Notebooks
I think this photo is adorable: It’s from a blog called The Lily Pad, where the child’s mother writes: Her favorite thing is notebooks. Big notebooks, tiny notebooks, spiral notebooks, journals, blank pages, lined pages; she loves them all. I hope the love of art and writing and her imagination and creativity stay with her … Continue reading Starting Early: Kids Who Love Notebooks
